jurists. With the exception of Aristotle, hardly a single classical writer appears to have been consulted as much for his thoughts as for the dress in which he clothed them. Theology amounted to little more than barren speculation and fierce discussion upon questions which have long since been given over to the ingenuity of children. Chemistry and medicine hardly reached beyond the miserable empiricism of alchimy. Jurisprudence alone seems to have made any progress worth the mention.

It were certainly preferable that the Pontiffs should have encouraged a more reasonable spirit of inquiry. We regret that they knew little and cared less about those strengthening and invigorating studies which it was reserved for the revival of letters to introduce. We regret that they should have directed the mental energy, which, in its proper channel, might have advanced society for ages, and anticipated the splendid era of the seventeenth century, to such frippery as is now hardly admitted among female accomplishments. But, however idle their studies, it was far better that men should handle the pen than the sword, that they should sharpen their acumen by speculation than by intrigue. In the political character of the Papacy the enlightened and liberal spirit of our age finds little to admire. But a careful consideration of the times will discover even here some redeeming features, not indeed in the system itself, but in its bearing on the civilization of Europe. Before the comparatively recent adoption by the European States of the admirable principle of the Balance of Power, the constitution of society furnished very little protection against a dangerous consolidation of political authority. In our age, the courtesy maintained between even rival powers, the general abhorrence of any overt and unjustifiable transgression of the rights of nations would in almost any event be a sufficient guarantee against a Universal Despotism. But the barbarous spirit of the dark ages was far less scrupulous. Men had not learned the falsity and inhumanity of the maxim that might makes right. The destinies of Europe were therefore bandied about from sovereign to sovereign, as one master-spirit after another rose to the supremacy. The Papal power operated (feebly and inadequately we confess, but still it operated) to check this evil. Commencing its career long before the temporal thrones of Europe were reared, continuing from age to age while they successively rose and fell, preserving an unvarying system, it acted (we do not say voluntarily, for its 'course is not to be defended on moral grounds) somewhat as a grand regulator upon the complicated and ponderous machinery of international policy. A single glance at the German Empire will serve for an illustration. It is the opinion of judicious historians that but for the prodigious energy and the unconquerable will of Hildebrand, the Emperors would have established a despotism incomparably more galling and oppressive than that at which he was himself aiming. Charles V, nearly five centuries later, openly professed his intention of making the Council of Trent subservient to his own elevation to the spiritual as well as temporal supremacy of Europe. Nor was there, after the battle of Pavia, any power in Christendom from the interference of

which he had more to apprehend than from that of Pope Clement VII. That there was a ruling love of despotism in the Papacy is manifest. It is no less manifest that, had the Papacy existed alone, or in a more enlightened and liberal age, its influence must have been one of unmingled evil. But amid the barbarism and tyranny by which it was surrounded, "a spark of freedom," to adopt the fine expression of Gibbon, 66 was produced by this collision of adverse servitude."

The moral influence of the Papacy varied with the countries in which it was exerted. Beyond question the personal character of the Pontiffs was generally bad. In Italy, and to some extent in all the southern nations of Europe, this was perfectly well understood. Him upon whom the distant nation's looked as one armed with the thunders and the promises of the Almighty and the commissioned agent of His will, they knew to be a cunning and unprincipled trickster. The influence of the Pontiffs in the southern nations was therefore to bring the Church and its services into contempt. But the central and northern nations were very differently affected. They knew little about the private vices which disgraced the chair of St. Peter and transformed the Vatican into a brothel.

"Distance lends enchantment to the view."

The Pontiff was still to them what his sacred functions demanded that he should be. They trembled before the majesty which was armed with the terrors of a Divine Sanction. The haughty princes and nobles who boasted that “their will was their law," whom neither fear nor pity often turned from their purpose, could yet be tamed into submission by the threatened ban of excommunication. Beyond the limits of information therefore, with regard to their private immoralities, the authority of the Pope exerted a conservative influence.

We have mentioned excommunications, a word, the very mention of which for centuries made the ears of men to tingle. In the Apostolic age this rite was resorted to, as among Protestants at present, in the case of incorrigible offenders, but with the utmost grief and reluctance, without denunciation, and without civil consequences. With this simple and scriptural rite the Northern barbarians, upon their conversion, associated the terrible ceremonial with which the pagan priesthood were wont to denounce the anger of the Gods upon obnoxious individuals.* The Christian clergy impiously favored the delusion and manufactured from it the most formidable engine of spiritual despotism of either ancient or modern times. We have suggested one valuable tendency of the authority which it conferred on the Pontiffs. Its abuses are too manifest to require a particular consideration.

The evil influences of the Papacy are mostly so obvious as to render superfluous any extended observations upon them. One or two of the more comprehensive may be mentioned in this connection.

The proscription of free inquiry and the inhibition of private judgment, in matters of religion, crushed in its germ the proper develop

* Mosheim.

ment of the human mind. Reducing all theological doctrines to a Procrustean criterion of its own erection, it stinted alike the intellect and the heart, and compelled mankind to tread the narrow round of a selfstyled orthodoxy, visiting, with the most terrible denunciations of Divine vengeance, whoever dared to question the ipse dixit of the Holy See.

The institution of external forms as the criterion of religious character was a mischief fearfully prolific of a sanctimonious hypocrisy, of which the world has hardly to the present day discovered the danger and the extent. The Papacy is, however, responsible for this as for innumerable other abuses, only as the organ of the Church.

The debasing influence of the sale of indulgences is sufficiently obvious. But though exclusively chargeable upon those Pontiffs who were guilty of it, it was an evil unknown till about the revival of letters--it was then introduced in an emergency. It would be unjust to charge upon the Papacy, as such, a depravity peculiar to only one or two of its members.

Whatsoever good influences we have ascribed to the Holy See were good, only relatively, and as exerted upon an ignorant, barbarous, and superstitious age. Without judging either institutions or individuals by their own contemporaries rather than by the maxims of later and more enlightened periods, we shall manifestly fail to read history aright.

It is impossible for those who are favored with the light and liberty of the nineteenth century, and of a country like our own, to appreciate the emotions with which the Supreme Pontiffs were regarded amid the darkness and servile superstition of the middle ages. The deluded layman, conscious of his own moral infirmity, and looking forward with trembling solicitude to the awful mysteries of eternity, might well revere a personage to whom the Almighty had committed the gates of Heaven and Hell. To him the successor of St. Peter appeared as the peculiar favorite of Heaven. Like the ancient prophet, while others waited in the vestibule without, he was admitted to the immediate presence-chamber of the Most High. His Divine mission was attested by sanctions as terrible as his office was exalted. The blessings of his favor and the terrors of his anger alike despised the narrow limits of the present life. In the one hand he bore the keys which unlock the gates of the Celestial City; with the other he wielded the bolt of Divine vengeance, and released the Powers of Darkness to their dreadful work. Before such authority, the dignity of mere temporal sovereigns, the favor which could never save from the Second Death, the anger which could pursue its victim only to the grave, faded into insignificance.

How so prodigious a power over the consciences and the souls of men was employed we have feebly attempted to show. The catalogue of hideous crimes and vices which have at times disgraced the Apostolic Chair, rivals in its blackness and its vileness the annals of the Emperors of pagan Rome. Too often has the successor of St. Peter been the follower of Satan, and the Vicar of Heaven the agent of Hell. Too often has the awful sanctity of a Divine Commission served some

hollow-hearted libertine as a lure for his victim and the keys of Paradise to unlock the treasuries of superstitious princes. The care of the Vicegerent of God has been shared between the ministrations of the altar and the caresses of harlots, and from the same lips have issued at once the patriarchal blessing and the reeking fumes of debauchery. Some honorable exceptions there were, and we look back with delight upon the mild and heavenly radiance which they cast upon the Egyptian darkness surrounding them; some who, like the sixth Adrian, passed from the silence and seclusion of a priory to maintain their pure but feeble influence amid the mercenary bustlers of the Papal court, bitterly sighing, meanwhile, for the serene devotion of the lonely cell. But their lives were cast on evil times. Few and very sorrowful were the days of their pilgrimage; and they soon made way for successors of more daring ambition and less scrupulous consciences.

It will hardly be expected that after contemplating so appalling a scene of iniquity as the history of the Papacy presents, we should draw from the whole a conclusion favorable to the civilization of Europe. Were the personal vices of the Pontiffs our only proper criterion, we should decide at once and without hesitation. But a judgment based upon so narrow a foundation must be miserably partial and inadequate. Many correlative considerations, altogether abstracted from individual virtues or vices, must be duly weighed and appreciated. Upon some of these we have remarked at length; and when all are allowed the full weight which belongs to them, we incline, though hesitatingly, yet in common with some of the wisest and best men who have reviewed those gloomy ages, to think favorably of the Papal influence upon its contemporaries.

We intend no courtesy to the Pontiffs. In truth, if true, it is but a sorry boast that, professing to address mankind as the commissioned ministers of the Most High, and to guide our wandering race by the pure effulgence of a light from Heaven, they should have left the world in doubt whether many of them were lunatics or hypocrites; or at best should, in the judgment of charity, have somewhat meliorated the barbarism of the most barbarous age of the Christian era. Dismal indeed must have been the darkness which such a torch could have enlightened, and it is with gratitude to the Common Father that amid the increasing light of a more auspicious era, we turn from gazing upon so dark a picture of folly and of crime.

THE STREAM OF SONG.

MERRILY, merrily glideth free,
Murmuring down to a troubled sea,

The glorious stream

The stream of Song.

Out from its pearly bed springing bright,
Poureth it silvery floods of light-
A beautiful stream,

Sublime and strong.

Gently it wandereth mid sweet flowers,
Catching the smiles of the joyous hours,
Pursuing its waves
Of rippled light.

Swift as a cataract down it rushes-
Silently through mossy dells it gushes,
Meandering on

In wayward flight.

*

Slowly and solemnly moveth now-
Sad as a funeral dirge its flow

Of waters unseen

The stream of Song.

Quietly, mournfully glide its waves, Slow as a march to the land of graves; And murmuring low,

They flow along.

Hushed are its musical tones of glee; Hoarse as the voice of a troubled sea

It hurryeth on

A tireless wave.

Thus wayward, fitfully like a dream, Joyfully, mournfully glides the stream

Of varying song

Down to the grave!