and too naturally directed, to be without any religion at all; and the mere logical faculty which has so often, in such temperaments, thwarted the instincts that are more infallible than reason, he neither very much esteemed, nor exhibited with any vigour in his own intellectual formation. Indeed, he distinctly declares his attachment to the Church of Rome; and died, it is said, in the full observance of its peculiar ceremonies. He was, in certain of his opinions, as well as in his ordinary conduct, a very faithful servant of the Pope. True to that worshipful authority, but not to his own enlightened understanding, he offers an apology for ignorance in the people, concurrent with the interested orders of the papal court. It is not fit, that the Holy Bible, containing the mysteries of our faith, should be rummaged in a hall or kitchen;' nor that the inviolable language of the scriptures should suffer the certain detriment of translation into other tongues. Here was, no doubt, a most acceptable homage to the Church of Rome, then shaken by the Reformation. Montaigne, in that struggle, continued firm to the old-established constitution;-an infidel would naturally have revolted from that party round which the greatest strength of the Faith still rallied. The Church of Rome might have presented a more tempting mark for the practice of his wit; and the sensitive, capricious desire of freedom, that marked his temper, might have led him to covet and to exult in its downfal. But, like a good catholic, Montaigne withheld his shafts,—partly, because that church was in itself an object of his unfeigned reverence, and partly on the sentimental consideration that it had been the church of his fathers. True, it may be said, Montaigne was indeed a catholic confessed; but does it follow that he was a believer? We admit, that the inference is not conclusive; that the hottest catholics may be the coolest infidels; and that other evidence than his simple homage to the Pope might not be superfluous in establishing his religion. In his Essays there are certainly not many passages that bear testimony to his religious convictions; but there are some. Witness the Essay upon Prayer, that abounds in just and noble thoughts, springing from the inmost sanctuary of his mind. The sentiments there expressed are, in their complexion, peculiarly christian, and differ from Montaigne's morality in general, as no pattern or suggestion is to be found for them in the writings of Greece or Rome.

After all, however, Montaigne has come down to us as one of those who have been most eminent in their hostility to the Christian faith. His countrymen, Malbranche and Pascal, were among the first to denounce his scepticism,-and that, not

only

only in his philosophy, where it actually existed, but in his religion, which he has distinctly bottomed on the authority of revelation. In this light, it has ever since been the fashion to consider him in our own country, where he is represented as one of the boldest personations of infidelity. With Tournay and his other apologists, we are of opinion that he has here been unfairly dealt with. The accusation is rested chiefly on his famous Essay entitled 'An Apology for Raimond de Sebonde'; and to that we now beg the reader's attention very shortly,— not only as it is the most elaborate of all Montaigne's speculations, but because, from its unusual method and coherence, it is almost the only one susceptible of analysis.

Christians are in the wrong to make human reasoning the basis of their belief; for the object of that belief is only conceivable by faith, and by a special inspiration of Divine grace.' Such is the argument of this perilous dissertation. The doctrine it announces was evidently levelled at the Reformers who, in their theological warfare, had set up the standard of pure reason; and as evidently it was intended to support the spiritual tyranny of the Pope, whose best security might rest on such a depression of the understanding in those who submitted to his sway. But in serving his church in this manner, was it necessary that Montaigne should fling away his creed; or that while he indulged his joke against humanity, he could not possibly retain his reverence for its Redeemer? perilled his faith, no doubt, upon a narrow foundation; and perhaps the worthlessness of human nature, as he describes it, too evidently points to the needlessness of its immortality. The question, however, does not respect the prudence of the reasoner, but the conviction of the man. In illustration of what that conviction might have been consistently with such reasoning, we may mention that the same argument as proposed by Sebonde was considered by many in these times, as affording a signal service to revealed religion; and that Sebonde's book, in which it was contained, was recommended to Montaigne's devout perusal by his own father.

He

Having thus secured his religion behind the shelter of Faith, Montaigne proceeds to expose the radical uncertainty of every other ground of belief; and opens a tempest of abuse from every quarter upon human nature. In the depreciating spirit of fashionable society, aggravated by a malignant philosophy, he commences by stripping mankind of every mark of distinction from the lower animals. The one is sunk and the other raised, until they stand upon the same level. The whole recorded excellences of the brute are opposed to all the common

place

place infirmities of the man. Who has not heard, in the former, of instincts superior to reason, and of a reasoning sagacity,― of equity and affection, of magnanimity, pity, and repentance,of social propensities, and the contrivances of a civil polity from which man might take example? On the other hand, he enlarges upon the happiness and virtue of the ignorant, the evils of imagination, the madness of great wits, the proneness of the human faculties, in their greatest vigour, to unprofitable studies, and the chimeras of all theologies but one-Man is certainly stark mad: he cannot make a flea, and yet he makes gods by dozens.' Then follows an unrelenting tornado of the metaphysical kind. There is no foundation for the sciences, history, morals or jurisprudence, because there is no axiom in any of these branches beyond dispute; the very ideas of time, space, motion, and truth are but the visions of individual minds. The senses are no less the beginning than the end of all our knowledge. Whoever should make up a faggot of the fooleries of human wisdom, would produce wonders. I willingly muster up these for a pattern.'

In this treatise, the reader will find distinct anticipations of all the sceptical philosophy of the eighteenth century; and it cannot be denied that the mischief which it has wrought has been scarcely less extensive than its influence. More, however, must have been allured by the felicity of the author's vein in this discourse than subdued by the force of his reasons; for the sophistry is, on the whole, far too apparent and, at any rate, there are worse foundations for a creed than the degradation of human nature. In the meantime, it will be observed, that this sweeping scepticism still professes to hold in reverence whatever has been communicated by faith; and that Montaigne, while a sceptic in his philosophy of human nature, is by no means so, or professedly so, in his religion. That distinction has been generally overlooked; and in treating of his personal character, it has been the fashion to consider him as not more credulous in religion than became such a Pyrrhonist in philosophy and after all, even in his Pyrrhonism, he appears to have been not much in earnest. 'Very often for the sake of exercise and argument, I have undertaken to maintain an opinion contrary to my own; but in the course of bending and applying my mind in that direction, I have become so thoroughly attached to it, that I no longer discern the reasons of my former belief, and forsake it.' This is explicit; and we perceive now the unfortunate influence exerted on his philosophy, by that extraordinary facility of temper, and indiscriminate toleration

of

of all forms of opinion, which we have already noticed as among the elements of his character.

We have submitted these remarks on the genius and character of Montaigne in those parts of both, which appear to have been liable to some misconception. We have said nothing of what has been too well defined to have admitted of any difference of opinion: we have said nothing of his defects--of his capricious and incoherent meditations,-of his paraphrastic versions of the Ancients under an appearance of novelty,or of the obscenities so frankly and so joyously expressed in the Essay that bears the modest title of Remarks on some verses of Virgil.' Our readers will forgive this recurrence to a writer with whom they have been long well acquainted, if we have offered plausible reasons for representing him as retaining, with all his affectations, the sensibility of genius to the pulcrum et honestum; as an egotist without vanity; as inconstant from temperament, and yet a great thinker; as a Pyrrhonist and yet à Christian. We are not of the opinion that Montaigne is to be esteemed chiefly for the minute and graphic portrait which he has presented of himself; nor as Mr. Stewart has expressed it, for the liveliness and felicity with which he has embodied in words, the previous wanderings of our own imaginations." This is but a degrading account of the writings of Montaigne-reducing them from the highest aspirations of morality to a level with the fashionable conversations of Swift, and representing every ordinary reader, as a forerunner in his noblest career of meditation.

We have alluded to the extensive influence of Montaigne on the subsequent literature of Europe, and might have adduced some curious illustrations, which we shall reserve for another occasion. In England, as in France, he has been read, admired, and followed. Our own writers, however, have been most ready, in general, to relish and to imitate what was best in the writings of Montaigne. They have taken example for the relaxation of their own style, from the freedom and artlessness of his; they have profited by his conversational manner, gracefully dealing with the topics of philosophy; they have learned something from his ingenuity, his humanity, and even from his idiosyncrasies. But in France Montaigne appears to have operated in a manner altogether injurious: nothing in his writings has been so influential in that country as his scepticism, the seeds of which were scattered so abundantly in his apology for Sebonde: not a hint was there dropped that was not afterwards taken up and fully developed by the more patient and

penurious

penurious thinkers that formed the sceptical philosophy of France. In the one country his ascendancy has been altogether malignant; in the other, it has, on the whole, favourably affected literature, if not morality; and it is remarkable that, in accordance with that diversity of influence, the Essays of Montaigne have at this day a greater estimation in this than in their native country.

ART. X.-Mémoires de Vidocq. Vols. iii. and iv. 8vo. Paris, 1829.

TEVER was imitation of foreign laws carried to a greater

NEVER extent than within the last few years, in matters strictly

connected with, nay of the very first and most vital importance to our liberty; against the spirit, practice, and express words of our ancient laws and constitution. Whilst other nations, where there is a government police, are endeavouring with all their strength to shake it off, and to have such power intrusted to the people, we, who for a thousand years have possessed this system of popular right, now destroy it, and seek to introduce a practice, which the constant experience of those among whom it is received, proves to be the most dangerous and effective engine of despotism. Whilst the passport system, so strictly connected with the police, is loudly complained of, deprecated, hated by all the thinking part of the population where it is received, we are tampering with it, and heedlessly breaking an express article of that Magna Charta of which we have hitherto been so proud.* In France, where the jury is denied in most misdemeanors, or petty offences tried before minor tribunals (tribunaux correctionels), strong efforts are made to have this custom abolished, whilst we, against the most sacred and open disposition of the Magna Charta, are daily introducing the principle that Englishmen may be condemned without a jury.† Let those, who speak of the progress of liberty in this country, and who laugh at the fears of such as evince uneasiness

Omnes mercatores habeant salvum et securum exire ab Anglia et venire in Angliam, morari et ire per Angliam. Yet this law was not so liberal as that published about the same time by Emperor Frederic II. Omnes peregrini et advenae libere hospitentur ubi voluerint. A pope confirmed this law, which despotism has rendered a dead letter; but no pope nor government has solemnly abolished it, as we have done the above article of the Magna Charta.

+ Two magistrates have of late been empowered to condemn persons to six months, or even one year's imprisonment, in a great number of cases. Acts being passed without reference to one another, it follows, that the principle being once admitted, is introduced into more laws than the legislators are generally aware of.

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