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tained certain doubts respecting the Church | brated universities of Europe. These liter-doubts in a great measure brought on ary crusades, or exploring tours, were very by the position which he had assumed in frequent three centuries ago; in many the Aristotelic controversy. Peripatetism, cases, as in that of Ramus, they were matwe have already said, was, with scholastic ters of necessity, but the results often divines, almost part of a Christian's creed, proved extremely beneficial: learned men and those who refused to subscribe the thus met together; an interchange of ideas doctrines of Aristotle, were considered as took place; and the visits of a Galileo or a downright heretics. The leaven of heter- Ramus generally led to discoveries or to odoxy, after having tainted Ramus, spread improvements, both in science and in literitself, as it appears, throughout the Col- ature. Thus we find Calvin spending the lège de France; the pupils of Presles, one greater part of his life in going from place and all, renounced the old faith, and under to place, to spread the principles of the the liberal and noble administration of Reformation; thus we see Giordano BruChancelier de l'Hôpital, Protestantism had no, under sentence of excommunication, gained many an illustrious supporter from wandering hither and thither, and in rethe ranks of those who hated scholasticism turn for the hospitality which he receives as the exponent of intellectual as well as at the hand of Hubert Languet, or Sir religious despotism. Unfortunately, the Philip Sydney, revealing to his entertainworld was not yet ripe for the principles ers the bold flights of his own imagination, of freedom, and the massacre of the Pro- and the treasures of an original system of testants of Vassy gave the signal of the philosophy. Previous to his departure, civil wars, which were to retard for so Ramus devoted the greater proportion of many years the progress of civilization and a well-earned fortune to the creation of a the triumph of truth. Ramus did not live mathematical lectureship at the Collège long enough to see the horrible unfolding de France. This was his legacy to the of all those plus quam civilia bella, but he establishment where his own brighter days witnessed the three first, and uniformly had been spent, and it still exists as a shared the destinies and the misfortunes monument of his generosity, and of his of his brethren in the faith. Between the attachment to the cause of learning. years 1562 and 1572, the life of Ramus reminds us of a noble bark, tossed about on a stormy sea by the fury of wind and tide; as soon as the war breaks out, as soon as the relentless spirit of religious fanaticism is let loose, he is obliged to fly from his country, and to seek, in foreign climes, a place where he may worship God in safety, and proclaim undisturbed the everlasting rights of the human thoughts; when a short interval of quiet occurs, through the weakness of some leader or the wise counsel of some politician, we behold Ramus returning once more to his beloved Collège de Presles, resuming his lectures, defending against the Jesuits the privileges of the University, and for the hundredth time impugning the authority of Aristotle before the enthusiastic students assembled to hear him.

The last journey which Ramus undertook before his death occupied two entire years; he started in August, 1568, and visited the whole of Germany. He had very prudently foreseen that a fresh storm was about to burst upon his unhappy country, and he, therefore, solicited from the king to be sent officially on a sort of scientific mission throughout the most cele

We cannot, like M. Waddington, take up the pilgrim's staff, and follow Ramus in his travels. His first stay was at Strasburg, where the rector Sturm received him with the greatest honor; from thence he proceeded to Basle, and during a ten months' sojourn in that town, he published his chief mathematical works. At Zurich he became acquainted with Bullinger; at Berne he found likewise everybody eager to see him; and at Heidelberg he began a course of lectures at the request of the Elector Palatine, Frederick III., but was obliged to leave on account of the vehement opposition offered by the Aristotelians; Frankfort, Nuremberg, Augsburg, Lau sanne, and Geneva, "the delight of the Christian world," as he used to say, were visited in turns. Amongst his friends we find recorded the names of Tremellius, Languet, Camerarius, and Tycho Brahe, who, although at that time only fifteen years old, had already acquired much fame by his astronomical discoveries.

The history of our philosopher's temporary residence at Geneva is one of the most interesting parts in M. Waddington's volume. Calvin had been dead six years when Ramus arrived in the capital of Swiss

Protestantism, and Theodore Beza was far | unanimous in making that man responsible from adopting all the innovations adopt- for it; pointed at on all sides as the assased so enthusiastically at the Collège de sin of Ramus, Charpentier never attemptPresles. "Many learned men," he said, ed to deny the fact; nay, further, he had in a letter to Ramus, "have, you are well the impudence to assert that those who aware, seen with displeasure, your animad- murdered the opponents of Aristotle had versions against Aristotle. You are quite only done an act of justice. In relating at liberty to blame me for sharing their the atrocious deed, the biographer rises to views. As for me, I adhere to my senti- real eloquence: ments, and I do not see how this can in any way disturb our mutual affection, unless perchance you believe there can be no friendship except between those who, on all subjects, are exactly of one opinion." Such were the dispositions of Theodore Beza; we see that, if not quite hostile to Ramus, neither were they of a cordial character. However, our philosopher having reached Geneva about the end of May, or the beginning of June, 1570, was very well received there by the citizens; he even gave a series of lectures, which attracted so numerous a concourse of students that it became quite evident that the reaction against Aristotle had developed itself even under the most unfavorable circumstances. Driven away from Geneva by the fear of being infected with a contagious disease which was raging in those quarters, Ramus visited Lausanne on his way to Paris, whither he hastened as soon as he received the first news of the treaty of Saint Germain-en-Laye.

mulation of horrors, in order to deplore only a "I turn aside," he exclaims, "from that accusingle crime. I never could have tears enough for so many heroic and innocent victims; I never could find power enough to describe a scene so extensive. Out of a long list of murders, I have only, thank God, a solitary one to relate, but it is so frightful that, about to undertake as I am the mournful narrative, I fear lest I should be in its minutest circumstances the history of accused of exaggeration by those even who know which I purpose unfolding a separate episode. In describing this crime I need only put together evidence of those who witnessed it. Paid assassins, led on by two men, one of whom was a tailor by trade, and the other a serjeant, broke open the gate of the Collège de Presles, and began to examine the house from top to bottom. Understanding that he was the object of all these threats, Ramus had retired into his study on the fifth story, and there he awaited in meditation and prayer, when the band of murderers, acting upon some indications which had been given to them, found out his retreat, forced the door, and with his hands clasped and his looks turned torushed into the room. Ramus was on his knees, Unfortunately for our philosopher, mat- those infuriated men whom an involuntary feelwards heaven. He rose; he wished to address ters had become very much altered since ing of respect still kept hesitating; but he soon his departure; his conversion to Protest-discovered that he must reckon upon neither antism of course alienated from him the Cardinal de Lorraine; and exposed as he was to all the animosity of the Catholic party, he no longer found by his side, his old friend the Chancelier de l'Hôpital. done evil in thy sight; thy judgments are equiAt the head of his enemies was his rival at ty and truth: deal mercifully with me, and have compassion on those unhappy men who know the Sorbonne, Charpentier, a man of whom not what they are doing! This was all he it has been said that he was the imperson- could say, on account of the eagerness of the ation of jealousy, and whose feelings of murderers to finish their work. One of the leadenvy had grown into positive hatred. ers, uttering frightful blasphemies, fired at the Ramus was pensioned off: he had deter- head of Ramus; the two balls rebounded against mined upon devoting henceforth the whole the wall; another ran him through the chest of his time to the study of the Scriptures from the wounds, and yet Ramus still lived; the with his sword. The blood was gushing freely and to theological works, when the Mas-assassins then had recourse to another kind of sacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day put an end to all these plans by removing him to the "society of the just made perfect." He was sixty-nine years old.

M. Waddington has proved to a certainty that the murder of Ramus was perpetrated at the instigation of Charpentier; all the authorities who have in any way alluded to that horrid catastrophe are

VOL. XXXIX.—NO. IV.

mercy nor compassion, and availing himself of a few last moments which were granted to him, he commended his soul to God, and exclaimed: O my God, I have sinned against thee; I have

torture; they threw the body out of a window at the height of more than a hundred steps from the ground. In its way it met a roof, which it partly broke through, and fell quite mangled in the college court. The blood covered the pavement; the entrails had gushed out, and Ramus remains in the vilest manner, fastened a rope to was not yet a corpse; they insulted his mangled his legs, and dragged him through the streets of Paris to the Seine; there a surgeon, as it is com

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monly reported, cut off his head, and the trunk | was thrown into the river. We can assert, from Nancel's testimony, that some passers-by gave a crown to a few bargemen who brought to shore the corpse which was floating about near the Pont Saint Michel: they feasted their eyes with the shocking spectacle. In short, all the extremities of cruelty could hardly satisfy the extraordinary fury which animated the enemies of Ramus."

&c.

Besides metaphysicians, amongst whom Gaspard Plaffrad, Henning Rennemann, John Cramer, and F. Beurhusius hold the highest rank, jurists and divines were seen making an open profession of Ramism, such as Wesembeck, Brederode, and Gerard. However, as it was suspected that certain sympathies existed between the followers of Ramus and the disciples of Calvin, exclusive Lutherans soon returned to the system of dialectics professed by Melancthon, and the philosophers of Germany were distinguished as Ramists and anti-Ramists, otherwise called Philippists.

"The opinions of Ramus took a still more Stewart, Earl of Murray, regent in the latter solid footing in England and Scotland. James Buchanan was his friend, and it was perhaps kingdom, had been the pupil of our philosopher, through the protection of the Scotch peer that Ramism obtained admittance in the classes belonging to the university of St. Andrew. Oxford forms part of the domains of Aristotle and scholasticism; we need not, therefore, be surprised that the new opinions were persecuted bridge, where, in conformity with the spirit of there; but things were quite different at CamRamism, mathematics have always been quite as much cultivated as literature. Roger Ascham rather liked the doctrines of the French philosopher; and under his influence, the liberal university of Cambridge adopted a teaching which enjoyed besides the warm patronage of Sir vain Bacon accumulated against Ramism the Philip Sydney and Sir William Temple. In most offensive insults. . . . In 1672, Ramism in England was as flourishing as ever; a bookseller of the university of Cambridge published the "Dialectics" of Ramus with the commentaries of William Ames, and in the same year that work had the still more extraordinary honor of entitled, being faithfully abridged in Milton's treatise, Petri Rami methodum concinnata.” "Artis logicæ plenior institutio ad

The chapter from which we have taken the above extract, is one which contains some of the heaviest evidences against the Roman Catholic party in France during the sixteenth century. As a relief the reader cannot do better than turn to the next, in which M. Waddington has collected together a variety of most entertaining anecdotes on the various personages with whom Ramus was acquainted. Pierre Gallaud, Pasquier, Charles de Lorraine, Ronsard, Loysel, Pithou-all those worthies and many more besides, figure in these amusing pages, which exhibit to us, if we may so say, a gallery of great men en robe de chambre. Those amongst our friends will revel over the racy chapter we are now alluding to, who have perused the duodecimos published by the Elzevirs, and in which, under the title of Scaligerana, Thuana, Perroniana, and Menagiana, is accumulated so much chit-chat respecting the literati of former days. They will follow there in all its details the life of Ramus; they will become acquainted with his habits, his way of living, his studies, and his recreations; they will see the poor scholar, the son of a farmer and grandson of a charcoal burner, by dint of labor and perseverance, enjoying at least twelve M. Waddington is an enthusiast; he thousand pounds of annual income, which has spent ten years in studying thorough. he spent entirely for the benefit of his dearly his hero, and although he acknowledges college, building libraries, defraying the very frankly that Ramus was by no means educational expenses of twelve students, a perfect man, yet he ascribes to him as a and founding a lectureship which is still, teacher and a writer, an influence which in the nineteenth century, a memorial of we are not singular in calling exaggerated. his name and a proof of his enlightened In the character of Ramus there was more

munificence.

It is quite certain that as a teacher of metaphysics and as a reformer, Ramus possessed much influence. For a long time Europe was divided into parties of Ramists, Anti-Ramists, and Semi-Ramists,

"In Germany," says M. Waddington, "the professorships of philosophy were for a short time held almost exclusively by the supporters of Ramism, at least in the Protestant universities, especially at Altorf, Corbach, Dusseldorf, Göttingen, Helmstadt, Erfurt, Leipsic, Marburg, Hanover, Hamburg, Lubeck, Rostock, Dantsic,

of the littérateur than of the thinker; he has really done more for the revival of philology, erudition, and literature in general, than for the progress of metaphysical science. At the time when he appeared, the intellectual world in Europe might be considered as forming naturally two great divisions, including respectively men of high merit but of unequal powers. Giordano Bruno, Campanella, Pomponaccio, Cremonini, Nicolaus Cusanus, Cornelius Agrippa, Jerome Cardan, Sanchez, Charron, Montaigne,-such are a few of those

Such was the character of Ramus. That it is well worth studying no one will deny; and accordingly M. Waddington deserves our best thanks for having added to the stores of our biographical literature a work which is complete without being dry, and done heartily without any of that party spirit which contemporary writers do not always endeavor to avoid. At the begin

whom we would really call original think- | the heart and of the mind, and by his unbounders, men of high metaphysical acumen, and ed devotedness to the great cause of intellectual whose influence as such was very much progress." felt. On the other hand, we find a host of elegant writers, gifted with great classical taste, perfectly qualified to illustrate Cicero, or to explain the beauties of Euripides; to this category belonged Laurentius Valla, Marius Nizolius, Ludovicus Vives, and Rudolph Agricola. Ramus shines undoubtedly primus inter pares of this last-named band; but we question whether he is really entitled to a place in the for-ning of this paper we have enumerated the mer. M. Cousin himself (Fragments de Philosophie Cartésienne,) says, that "Ramus had not much depth of mind, and that he was not gifted with powerful originality." In a word, Ramus was a firstrate critic and an admirable lecturer on metaphysics, but that was all; for, as another writer accurately remarks, he had not received from above that gift of patience which, according to Buffon, is one of the distinguishing features of scientific men. Notwithstanding the qualified manner in which we subscribe to M. Waddington's praise of Ramus, we should be unfeignedly grieved if our readers were to suppose that we wish either to deny the philosopher's merits, or to find fault with the admiration which has inspired the eloquent pages of his biographer. It is no small evidence of a man's greatness that he stands up as the undaunted champion of truth, against the combined attack of a powerful majority, and that he assails error when the supporters of error have at their command racks and gibbets, dungeons and assassins.

"To free the human mind from the yoke of Aristotle and from scholastic darkness; to simplify the study of all the sciences, and to vulgarize them by making them speak the language of the people; to encourage in France the study of mathematics; to inculcate the principles of intellectual freedom by a noble and useful example; finally, to direct metaphysical science into the right path by making it rest upon the observation of human nature,-such were the chief services for which the world was indebted to Ramus and to Ramism. Considered in itself, a work such as this deserves all our respect; but when we remember a life entirely spent in the service of virtue and of truth, how can we but feel the deepest sympathy for the victim of intolerance, purchasing with his blood a freedom which he has not been spared to enjoy, but which he has

principal authorities from whose works we had hitherto derived all we knew about Ramus. There are, besides, still extant three lengthened biographies of our philosopher; but they seem not to have been known even by the historians who preceded M. Waddington; and instead of the interesting and well-written volume we have just now been reviewing, how tedious would be the wading through the wormeaten, musty old pages of Nancel, John Thomas Freigius, and Theophilus Banosius! The appendix of original documents which closes the work, will sufficiently show how all these sources of information, and many others besides, have been studied, analyzed, and made use of by the learned author. The treatises of Ramus himself are of such rare occurrence at the present day that it is difficult to meet with them even in the best collections; and if M. Waddington had not been enabled to use freely M. Victor Cousin's splendid philosophical library, he would have perhaps found it quite impossible to proceed with his undertaking.

In times when the spirit of controversy is abroad, works like the present are doubly valuable. In the first place, they show to Protestants how their ancestors toiled and suffered for the cause of religious and intellectual freedom-a cause against which the hatred of bigots is as fierce as ever. In the next, they enable unprejudiced persons professing another faith, to judge for themselves whether the Reformation is indeed, as the Univers Religieux would have us believe, at the root of all the crimes which have since the sixteenth century disgraced the name of man. We would add by way of conclusion, that no one was better qualified to write the bequeathed to us as a precious inheritance. It biography of a Protestant metaphysician is assuredly a duty and an honor for modern than a gentleman who is now the only philosophers to reckon among their ancestors a Protestant lecturer on metaphysics belongman conspicuous by the highest gifts both of ing to the University of France.

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RICHARD CROMWELL, AND THE DAWN OF THE RESTORATION.*

Ir implies a slur on the historical ele- those who were more or less involved in ment of English literature that that final public affairs to record them as they hapact in the drama of the Cromwellian gov-pened. They have also a peculiar value ernment which serves beyond all others in point of authenticity. They record facts to illustrate the union of revolution with generally within the sphere of each indiviprescription in the political history of this dual writer, and which little beyond his country, and consequently to shadow forth general fidelity can be necessary to estabthe free yet conservative principles by lish; while they are often reciprocally corrowhich it has always been characterized, borative of each other, under circumstances should have been more or less neglected excluding the possibility of collusion beby our own historians, to be portrayed, tween different writers. From these journearly two hundred years after the period nals, or diaries, M. Guizot draws largely, to which it refers, by a French writer. as well as from different collections of This great subject has been dealt with by State Papers, such as those of Clarendon M. Guizot in a manner worthy of the his- and Thurloe, and from other writings of torian and philosopher who had already some historical pretension. successfully described an earlier portion of the story of the Revolution. It has been singularly exempted from the treatment of our more philosophical historians. Sir James Mackintosh describes no earlier revolution than that of William III.; and Mr. Carlyle does not condescend to chronicle the annals of the house of Cromwell beyond the period of the death of Oliver. The eminent historians who had thus left an opening for a future work based upon a period to which their own labors closely approximated, had no doubt their own reasons in leaving so ample a field unoccupied, but they have surrendered to a foreigner a rich harvest in the history of their own country.

The elements of the present history by M. Guizot have for the most part been lying before us during a period of a hundred and fifty years. One of the most common methods adopted for the transmission of events two hundred years ago, was that of diaries, which were frequently kept by literary and political persons. These journals were naturally suggested by the importance and the violence of the times, when stirring events prompted

* History of the Protectorate of Richard Cromwell, and the Dawn of the Restoration. By M. GUIZOT. Two Vols. Bentley. London, 1856.

This drama comprehends the period intervening between the death of Oliver Cromwell, in September, 1658, and the Restoration of Charles II., in May, 1660. That brief but important juncture deserves to be considered in a double light-first, in respect to the foreign, and secondly, to the domestic or civil, relations of the country. The Anglo-French alliance, which formed as much the leading feature of that age as of the present time, was the basis of the whole foreign policy of the Commonwealth. This alliance, which was originated by the first Protector, formed the only tradition of his policy that survived his administration, and was clung to with a tenacity singularly at variance with the rapid subversion of the form of government which he bequeathed to his descendant. The period, therefore, over which M. Guizot's work extends, does not constitute an era in the foreign relations of this country, as it constitutes an era in its domestic government.

We will, however, deal briefly with the first question, partly because it occupies an extensive foreground in M. Guizot's work, and partly because it deserves to be considered afresh, as one of the most masterly and original of the conceptions of Oliver Cromwell. We are aware that it is popular in these days to exalt every

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