quences, for it paved the way for the introduction of ideas which the Scriptures, properly understood, never sanctioned, and inculcated contempt for the letter of the Bible. Its influence is felt even in our age, for it cannot be denied that the mythical view of the gospel narratives, which regards the facts recorded as the fruit simply of a productive imagination, bears a striking resemblance to it. But Philo, as well as Origen, strenuously insisted on the historical reality of the facts of the Old Testament, and admitted that the literal interpretation was best adapted to promote the religious interests of the common people. Yet, according to his notions, the allegorical mode was preferable, which, penetrating the shell of the word, grasped, in the exercise of speculation, its hidden mystery, which abstracted from God all human qualities, and presented him to the mind in his simple essence. In this way he revived, under a Christian form, the old heathen distinction between a religion designed for the people, and a religion for the enlightened.

This system of Philo was reduced to practice by the Therapeutæ, or "servants of God," (deparεvetv.) Like the Essenes, to whom they bore a striking similarity, (though we can trace no historical connexion between them,) they must be regarded as Jewish monks. Not far from Alexandria, by the Lake Moris, they dwelt in tents, (σεμνεια, μοναστήρια,) and passed their time in contemplating heavenly things, and in practising asceticism. In interpreting the Bible they followed the allegorical method. They fasted sometimes for six days, and their ordinary food was bread and water. On each Sabbath-day, which was observed with peculiar sanctity, they partook of a love-feast on bread mixed with salt and hyssop, sung ancient hymns, and performed mystic dances, in commemoration of the passage of their fathers over the Red Sea, that is, according to their allegorical exegesis, of the deliverance of the spirit from the fetters of sense. The characteristic doctrine of this sect was, that sin was something simply negative, having its seat in the body as such, and that the body, on this account, was the prison-house of the soul. Thus the highest good consisted in the mortification of the flesh. Death by self-denial was the birth into happiness and glory. In their relation to Christianity, they occupy a similar position with the Essenes.

§ 14. Conclusion.

From this entire representation it is very clear that, at the time of Christ's birth, old institutions were fast decaying, and that the spirit of heathenism, exhausted by its own action, was about to vanish, proving conclusively the absolute necessity for the introduc

tion of a new life to rescue the world from destruction.

On the one

hand we discover, among the people, a dreary infidelity, which rejected the old systems of faith without substituting any in their stead; on the other, a blind superstition, which obstinately adhered to the decaying mythological belief, and rendered it still more ridiculous by fantastic extravagances. It is very often the case that infidelity and superstition are found combined, because man is compelled by the necessities of his life to believe something. If he does not believe in God, he will be tormented by an uncomfortable faith in ghosts. Augustus Cæsar, who patronized the religion of Rome through policy, was terrified when he happened to draw his boot first on the left foot instead of the right. The skeptic Pliny wore amulets for protection against thunder and lightning.

The best feature of this age was that intense longing of the soul, which fled from the miseries of life, and, distrusting its own resources, sought deliverance in some power beyond itself. Messianic hopes were scattered over the whole world by means of political intercourse amongst the different nations. Like the first red streaks along the horizon which foretell the dawn, so these aspirations were the harbingers of the coming Messiah. The Persians awaited the coming of Sosiosh, who would destroy the kingdom of Ahriman, and break the power of darkness; the Chinese Confucius pointed his followers to the Holy One who should appear in the West, whilst the West directed its eyes to the East. Suetonius and Tacitus speak of an opinion then universally prevalent among the Romans, that in the East a new kingdom was to be established.

Precisely then, when the world was unsettled and dissatisfied with existing relations, appeared the Messiah, in an obscure and despised corner of the earth. With his crucified hands, he lifted the world out of its degradation; with his own life, he filled it with fresh energy. His salvation was a savour of death to those who, clothed in a mantle of licentiousness, could not appreciate his beauty; but, to the susceptible and morally inclined, a savour of life. Truly, as well as beautifully, says Augustine: "Christ appeared to the men of a world fast decaying, when the objects of their former love had become sources of disgust, that they might draw from the fountain of life fresh and renewed energies." With the words, "Repent and believe," was concluded the Iliad of history, and now commenced its Odyssey. As Ulysses, after having endured the hardships of the Trojan war, returned in safety to the bosom of his beloved Penelope, so the old world, after having exhausted its energies in trying to satisfy its wants, was led to Christ to renew its youth. Rome prolonged its wasting life for some years after the introduction of Christi

anity, but was at last compelled to submit its boasted wisdom to the foolishness of the cross, and thereby cease to be old Rome. Judaism, too, which, refusing to acknowledge its proper object, waged a deadly warfare against Christ and his apostles, wanders to this day, like a houseless spectre, through the places of the earth, and furnishes an invincible argument for the divine origin of Christianity, which, by its own efficacy, has conquered the world, imparted a new complexion to every department of science, occasioned and ruled the rise and progress of every great world-historical movement, and showered upon man the richest and choicest spiritual blessings.

ART. VII-LAMARTINE.

IN the year 1820, a young man, with a pale and melancholy countenance, and a step enfeebled by disease, "went timidly hawking about in Paris, from bookseller to bookseller, a poor little copy-book of verses, wet with tears. Everywhere they politely shifted off the poetry and the poet;" so says his friend, De Cormenin. In a work substantially made up of the incidents of his life, the young poet has himself drawn the picture of his forlorn predicament at this crisis of his history. His purse was nigh empty; he took his manuscript, his "last hope," to a noted bookseller, who received it with an ironical smile, and appointed him to return in a week: "My heart failed," he says, "on the eighth day;" the publisher gave him back his manuscript, and dashed his ambition without ceremony.-"I should advise you ill," said the book merchant, "if I induced you to publish this volume, and I should be doing you a sorry service in publishing it at my expense." So saying, he rose, and gave me back my manuscript," says the poet. "I took up the volume, I went down stairs, my legs trembling beneath me, and my eyes moistened with tears..

I returned to my room in despair. The child and the dog wondered, for the first time, at my sullen silence, and at the gloom that overspread my countenance."

Genius, however, need never "despair" in France. The child who had "wondered at the sullen silence and gloom" of the frustrated author, on his return from the book-mongers, had hardly advanced beyond the period of mature youth, when the abashed poet stood forth the most imposing and powerful personage in France, and the eyes of the world beheld what an English critic pronounces "the only instance in the world's history of a great nation calling a

poet to guide the helm of its affairs; or rather, of a poet contributing by the force of his genius to the overthrow of a powerful king, and seating himself, for a time at least, on his throne." During the four days of February, 1848, he was the ascendant genius, restraining the storm and compelling the mob at his will; and the trembling citizens of Paris felt that the voice of the poet was to them the voice of fate. Lamartine has fallen from power, but he can never fall from the historic sublimity, the apotheosis of his genius, which distinguished his connexion with the four days of February.

A very anomalous people are these Frenchmen, in both small and great things. Their Epicureanism has given science to our kitchens and French names to our dainties, though they content their stomachs with two meals per day; while their gruff neighbour, across the channel, affects to sneer at their gastronomic extravagance, and swallows his four meals daily, besides a lusty luncheon. Gay and even volatile beyond all other nations, they, at the same time, excel all others in the more difficult and abstract sciences, affording us many of our best improvements in mathematics and political economy, as well as in the more palpable details of chemistry and the natural sciences generally. Le Verrier, in the streets of Paris, would have been taken for a young scape-grace "about town," while his thoughts were beyond the circuit of the Georgium Sidus, compelling a new world to disclose itself. Gibbon pointed to the French as an exception, in his day, to that lesson of history which teaches that nations having attained the height of luxury and glory, as France had in the day of Louis XIV., must decline in national vigour and military spirit. But there is a still nobler anomaly in their national character. Dazzled by military glory, as children with gilded toys,-dandies in dress, and dandifying the rest of the world with their "modes,"-luxuriating at the table, and glorifying good cuisiniers, this same people excel all other communities in the appreciation of genius and the remuneration of literary merit. In their earlier history the troubadours exhilarated their courts and inspirited their battles. In the Voltairian era they crowned and worshipped their authors in the theatres, and soon afterwards upturned the nation and half of Europe at their voice. In our day they lift them, above the heads of abashed lawyers, disentitled nobles, and cunning diplomats, into the chief seats of their synagogues of power. Thiers, Guizot, Cousin, De Tocqueville, Arago, De Cormenin, Victor Hugo, Louis Blanc, Flocon, Marrast, Lamennais, Leroux, and we know not how many other authors, of good or evil influence, are living examples of the power of genius over the popular and political sympathies of France.

Lamartine is unquestionably the most remarkable instance of this power in our day. It would be a difficult task to delineate him as man, author, or statesman. A unique character is usually more easily portrayed than one of merely average traits, for strong peculiarities are readily distinguishable; but Lamartine presents such contrasted characteristics, such strength and weakness, such oracular wisdom and drivelling sentimentality in thought, such terseness and excessive affectation in style, that both the flatterer and the satirist could draw pictures of him as respectively true as they would be mutually contradictory. We have sat down not to attempt a complete estimate of him, the day has not come for that, but to glance at his works, and a few other materials which lie on our table,* and gather from them some frank though cursory inferences respecting his character, and remarkable positions as author and statesman; and if we shall, by a somewhat easy mood, appear to bear in mind that we are writing for the dog-days, we hope that such a proof of considerate regard for the reader will not lead him to depreciate our attempts to do justice to our subject.

The personal history of Lamartine has been sketched in "Galleries" of "Contemporains Illustres," magazines, and the “Feuilletons" of journals, but with many obvious defects and contradictions. At our present writing, Les Confidences (his auto-biography,—if such it may be called) are in process of publication in a Paris journal, La Presse; but we have traced them only through the period of his youth. We may, therefore, however cautious, be liable to inaccuracy in some of our statements.

He was born on the 21st of October, 1792, in Maçon, on the Saone, near the Swiss boundary. Like most remarkable men, he was the child of a remarkable mother, the elements of whose character were reproduced in his own, with the superadded vigour of genius. The discerning reader has but to observe his touching and incessant references to his mother, in order to comprehend the moral and intellectual traits of the son. That deep and melancholy religious spirit, feminine sentimentalism, and loyalty to the convictions of duty, which distinguish his writings-distinguish them almost as anomalous amidst a nation of skeptics, libertines, and experimental levellers are distinctly traceable to the maternal influence which formed and still imbues the soul of the poet. Some of the most felicitous pictures, which abound, in contrast with many sufficiently maudlin, in "Raphael" and in "Les Confidences," are drawn from the scenes

* Among these are Euvres de Lamartine, 2 vols., 8vo. The Pilgrimage to the Holy Land, 2 vols., 12mo. History of the Girondists, 3 vols., 12mo. Raphael, 18mo. Les Confidences. Three Months in Power, &c.