Those sweet, false names whose magic soothes, Friendship, and Love, and Trust, are thorns; And thorns alike are human Truths,

Rude spines that not a flower adorus.

Thorns are the Hopes of early years,

And thorns are Science, Wisdom's power: Tell me, dark Fate, amid thy tears,

Of all these thorns where is the flower?

Youth! season of fantastic shades,

That vanish where Truth's light has shone, Lives not one flower amid thy glades?—

One, though unheeded and alone?

Though false thy wreaths of bliss and love, True thorns of grief are felt each hour; Ah! where lies hid in Heaven above

Of all these thorns the guerdon flower!"

Zorrilla had been struggling on towards literary distinction, chiefly as a writer in periodicals; while Larra, a man of brilliant but eccentric talents, engrossed the attention of Madrid. But Larra, whose temper was hot and uncontrollable, excited beyond sanity by some unexpected vexation, committed suicide by shooting himself through the head, in February, 1837. Zorrilla rose suddenly to fame by an epicedium on the unfortunate Larra, which he recited beside his grave at the time of his interment. We do not give the poem, because it is generally allowed to be inferior to Zorrilla's powers; though, from the circumstances of the time and place, and the state of public feeling when recited, it was received with enthusiastic ap

plause. But there is another poem of his, of which the memory of Larra was the inspiring cause, which we much prefer to the epicedium. A lady having requested Zorrilla to inscribe some lines in her album, among the contributions of other poets, he found that the page on which he was about to write was immediately preceded by one filled with a beautiful and pathetic romance, from the pen of the departed Larra. His feelings on this occasion he has recorded in the effusion which he left in the album, and which he entitled

THE DOUBT.†

"Quando al escribir en ellas," &c.

Ere on these fair leaves writing,
I gaze in silence long;
Lady! I doubt me whether

To pour forth tear or song.
Such mem'ries here are treasur'd,

My mournful heart they wound; The more, that 'mid sweet blossoms These lurking thorns are found. The lay of tearful lover

Invites (with feeling deep), Less in his strains to mingle Than with his tears to weep. So plaintive are the numbers

Of him, our honour'd dead, That in my eyelids tremble

The drops they fain would shed. Since thus while others chaunted, One hath been weeping here; Lady! I doubt me whether

To pour forth song or tear.
Would from my pen that roses
Instead of words would spring!
Their fragrant forms entwining,
A votive wreath I'd bring.
But here must flow'rets wither
Beneath the cypress tree:
Here, where the dead hath spoken,
Mute should the living be.
The dead!-to this his record
Be reverence duly paid;
Perhaps around us hovers
E'en now his watchful shade.
I know my indecision

Hath well deserv'd thy blame;
My conscious fault is dyeing
My cheek with flush of shame.
Yet, O forgive that gazing

On these fair leaves so long,
Lady! I doubt me whether

To pour forth tear or song.

That thou sweet song dost merit,
So fully all agree,
That e'en a doubt implying

Would be but flattery.
Nor less we feel remembrance
To him is justly due,
Whom as an ardent lover

And child of grief we knew.
My mind, by both divided,

Decision strives to gain;
Be his sad mem'ry's homage-
Be thine the poet's strain.
All that of honour claimeth,
Thy gentle sex's bloom,
So much in tribute asketh,

His mournful shade, his tomb.

of the vowels. We omit the second stanza.

VOL. XLIV.-NO. CCLIX.

H

THOUGH We thought ourselves pretty well acquainted with the subject this work treats of, we had no idea it was so full of striking, interesting, and important facts. M. Weiss has opened a rich mine of history, which, though familiar in name, and generally to every one, has been hitherto, as a whole, and in the multitude of its most instructive details, not only unexplored but almost neglected. Just at this time of a revival of Popery and ultramontanism in France, and in some degree in England, too, his work cannot fail to have the effect of a most powerful reply to all the renewed pretensions of Rome. And this the more effectually, as it is neither controversial, polemical, nor theological; but a plain and pre-eminently impartial statement of a long and connected series of facts, so graphically put together, that they speak, as it were, to the very eye of the reader, without involving him in any puzzling questions at all. We have met with no book that so strongly, without advocacy, recommends Protestantism, as seen in its social and political results; or, that so strongly, without ire, condemns Popery from the same point of view. It is refreshing in these days of fantastic literature and romantic phi losophy, to read so sound a production -sound in style, sound in thoughta great and conscientious labour, directed to a great and beneficial end. For this publication cannot fail greatly to promote the cause of the Reformation in France just at this critical juncture, when there are so many Frenchmen of the highest class of intellect and character in that country, seeking anxiously for some safe medium of mind (which Protestantism affords), that, nationally or widely prevailing among them, may at once gurantee progress, and bar out revolution.

Undertaking to make good these

assertions as we proceed, we will come now to close quarters with the work before us; and the remark that first strikes us as singular and important is, that that which makes its excellence was the cause itself of the downfall of French Protestantism, and is likely to bring Protestantism, paradoxical as this opinion may appear, again into favour with the French people; we mean the well-nigh exclusively social and political, that is, mundane, temper and tendency, both of M. Weiss's history of the refugees, and of the first establishment of the reformed creed in France. Leaving one branch of this argument for consideration, should space permit, towards the close of this paper, we will now show how the secular character stamped from the beginning on the reformation by Frenchmen, whilst it produced its momentary success among them, led speedily to its total discomfiture.

The special causes of this discomfiture of Protestantism in France have always struck us to be principally the following:-1st, the want of devotional piety among the chief of the French Reformers; 2nd, the too early adoption of the Protestant doctrine by the nobility; and 3rd, the establishment of Protestantism as a separate temporal power within the State.

With respect to the first of these causes, we have only to muster before our mind's eye the great leaders of the Reform party, to be convinced that they were much more emphatically warriors, statesmen, and courtiers than religionists. High men though they were, and among the first heroes of the French nation, Coligni, D'Andelot, La None, &c. with the exception, perhaps, of Duplessis Mornay-speak to us much more of chivalry than of Christianity. Sully and De Thou were, the one a statesman, and the other a philosopher. Henry IV. was a

Acknow

wise, amiable, libertine prince, royal thoroughly, but a Christian not skin deep. The rest were, for the most part, all honourable men;" but nowhere do we find a single champion of purely spiritual truths. We impute this partly to Calvinism. ledging that system to be rigorously true, we are disposed, nevertheless, to think that, merely as a system of theology, it may, from its very completeness and conclusiveness, be adopted exclusively by the reason, and regarded only as a beautiful problem of religious philosophy solved; and under this aspect we think it was that the Reformation was first presented to the French people, and entertained by their divines. Protestantism under Calvin had reached its climax. It had lost its original ardour and enthusiasm, and had stiffened-especially at Geneva-into a kind of academic theology, a kind of Sorbonne, without a fixed locality. How, otherwise than by the supposition that the warm and moving spirit of religion had become frozen under hard questions of controversy, can we account for the fact, which we have taken pains to ascertain, that there are absolutely no Protestant works of devotional piety within the whole compass of French literature of the period we allude to? This fact explains satisfactorily the slight hold which the Protestant doctrine took on the French mind; but it cannot itself be accounted for, as might be supposed, by the religious wars and persecutions which the French Protestants suffered; for works of the kind we refer to have been rife, under similar circumstances, in other countries; and, besides the devotional feeling, where it exists, will find a vent as certainly and by the same means as the controversial feeling does. With reference to the second cause above specified, the adoption and almost absorption of the Reformation by the nobility, it had these bad effects: it prevented the reformed creed from becoming popular; its chiefs were not of the people, neither could they sympathise with the people; by them the preachers, from whom the grand national impression should have come, were cast completely into the shade; history has not delivered a single one of their names, as particularly eminent, down to posterity. The natural order of things, too, seems to

have been reversed; for, in moral revolutions, unlike political ones, reform should mount from the people to the nobility, and not descend from the nobility to the people. The first promulgation of Christianity proves this; and all history shows, that however the higher ranks may possess philosophy, independent of their humbler fellows, religion must always grow upward, from the base to the pinnacle of society, or that otherwise it passes away, as it did in France. By the direct reverse of this happening in that country, the Reformation was at once and inevitably converted into a great question of national politics. This has certainly, in a measure, occurred among other people; but never, except, perhaps, in the Netherlands, so completely, never, before Protestantism had time to strike its roots into the soil; and the result in the two countries, where it has been so thoroughly absorbed in political views, has been the same. The great cause of all, however, of its utter discomfiture in France, was its apparent triumphant success. By secular means it attained to a secular establishment, and this was its ruin. The Edict of Nantes effected this. To the reformed party was given, by this Edict, a great show of stability. They had their cities, their garrisons, their revenues, and governments of their own. They formed the completest imperium in imperio that ever existed in any kingdom. They were, to all outward appearance, a Protestant republic, existing within a Catholic monarchy. They formed an established national religion, torn from the entrails, and co-existing with another established national religion, which possessed the vantage ground. Their spirit had become perfectly materialised and secularised. Questions of peace and war and other great state matters occupied almost exclusively their attention. They were a great national council erected in a parallel line with the regal council, influencing, disputing, and controlling the deci sions of the latter, and ever ready, by force of arms, to assert with it an equal and joint authority. This state of things seemed to justify Richelieu in the war he waged on the Huguenot power, and its strength being mainly material, it naturally succumbed.

In order to understand how formid