well spent, and England is guiltless of the blood which during that awful contest was lavished as profusely as her treasure.

Revolution societies sprung up in England, which avowed the principles of the French republic. The publications of some of these associations breathed a spirit scarcely less ferocious than that of Danton and Marat. Others were contemptible for their ridiculous affectation of constitutional wisdom. They seemed fully to believe, as it was smartly said, that constitutions could be made like a pudding, by a recipe; and would have overthrown all the governments in Europe, to try the effect of a new one manufactured out of a few abstract principles, foremost amongst which was the equality of all men. Another body, called the London Corresponding Society, was a ridiculous copy of the French models. They affected to introduce the terms citizen and citizeness; and ardently desired that England might follow in the brilliant career of putting aristocrats to death without trial, and burning their houses without law, of which France had given so happy, so wise, and so fraternal an example. There were riots in Scotland and at Manchester; and at Birmingham a secret manufacture of three thousand daggers was said to be discovered. One of these Mr. Burke, with more of tragical effect than senatorial calmness, drew from his coat, and flung down, in the midst of his speech, on the floor of the house of commons. A few individuals, some even of rank and station, were, no doubt, infected with these absurdities; but, upon the whole, the heart of England was sound. No member of the great Whig party gave the slightest sanction to the revolutionary frenzy. Still, the danger was considerable; and it seemed to be the greater because the outburst was sudden. Fomented by the powerful government of France, now leading victorious armies into Prussia and the Low Countries, who could foresee the possible result?

4. In regard to Holland, the French government gave the most positive assurance that its conquest should not be attempted so long as it confined itself within the bounds of an exact neutrality. As Holland was desirous of peace, and was drawn reluctantly into the war by England, we cannot attach much importance to the argument for a rupture with France, on the ground of her real or supposed danger. These, then, are the points which the student of history must carefully weigh. As he decides upon them, he will decide upon the merits of Mr. Pitt's long and triumphant administration, and of what is far more important the moral rectitude of England, and the justice of the war with France. England then had no misgivings. Mr. Fox and his party, upon the first division, had dwindled down to fifty, against whom the government had 290 votes in the house of commons. So it was out of doors. The declaration of war was received with cheers on the Royal Exchange. Mr. Fox, almost alone, never ceased to protest against it as a war of panic;

and, by every means in his power, always, and under all circumstances, he endeavoured to bring it honourably to a close.

With a view of putting on record his opinions, Mr. Fox moved certain resolutions. He was opposed by Mr. Burke "in one of his wildest orations," and defeated by a majority of 270 to 44. They are:

1. "That it is not for the honour or interest of Great Britain to make war upon France on account of the internal circumstances of that country, for the purpose either of suppressing or punishing any opinions and principles, however pernicious in their tendency, which may prevail there, or of establishing among the French people any particular form of government.

2. "That the particular complaints which have been stated against the conduct of the French government are not of a nature to justify war in the first instance, without having attempted to obtain redress by negociation.

3. "That it appears to this house, that in the late negociations between his majesty's ministers and the agents of the French government, the said ministers did not take such measures as were likely to procure redress, without a rupture, for the grievances of which they complained; and particularly that they never stated distinctly to the French government any terms and conditions, the accession to which, on the part of France, would induce his majesty to persevere in a system of neutrality. "It has been untruly said, that the purport of these resolutions was to declare that in the recent transactions Great Britain had been in every case wrong, and France right and just. The doctrine of Mr. Fox, as we have seen, was, that the opening of the Scheldt was a violation of treaty, and the decree of the 19th of November an insult to Great Britain, but that it behoved the British government not merely to complain, but to state what reparation she would accept. Moreover, that if our terms were, that France should deprive herself of her means of offence against her invaders, but that her enemies should be left in full possession of the means of attack, to conquer, and to dismember the French territory, such terms would not be just or equal. It is difficult to resist the force of this reasoning, now that the passions of that day have in great measure subsided.

"In reviewing the speeches of these two great men, it is a duty to do justice to the motives of Mr. Pitt. French historians of the greatest eminence, such as M. Mignet and M. Thiers, have not hesitated to declare as certain that Mr. Pitt desired war, that he wished for it to strengthen his own cabinet, and to establish the maritime and colonial preponderance of Great Britain. I believe, on the contrary, that his most anxious desire was to preserve neutrality, and that he hoped, amidst the storms of the continent, by a wise system of economy and a judicious repeal of taxes affecting industry, to place the prosperity of Great Britain on a sure basis.

"The progress of events, the horror caused by the crimes of the revolution, the fear of French conquests in Belgium and Holland, and the influence of Mr. Burke and the Whig peers, drove him from this position. The question remains, how far was he right in resolving upon war at the time and in the manner he did?

"It can hardly be denied, I think, that the tacit consent and secret favour given to the invasion of France in the spring of 1792, was a serious mistake. Great Britain, as experience has shown, can scarcely be long a stranger to the convulsions of the continent of Europe. In the case before us, the attempt of the Allies could not by possibility lead to peaceable and definite settlement. If the Allies had reached Paris, if they had liberated Louis, if they had hung the majority of the Convention, and shot thousands of mayors, magistrates, and peasantry, according to their own declared intentions, how would such proceedings have tranquillized France? How could Louis, restored to liberty at the head quarters of the Allies, have conferred upon his subjects institutions which would have satisfied his people? How could the French be expected to submit to the loss of their independence while they were in the first fervour of a jealous love of liberty and exaggerated antipathy to monarchy? If, aware of this difficulty, the Allies had proceeded to weaken, to disarm, and even to dismember France, how fierce would have been the struggle, and how uncertain the result?

"If, on the other hand, as it actually fell out, the march to Paris should not only be a difficulty, but a failure, who could believe that the wild leaders of the Assembly, the republican Brissotine, and the ambitious Dumouriez, would adhere to the promise of refraining from conquest and intervention which had been held out to Great Britain as an inducement for her interference?

"Here, then, was the first serious error of Mr. Pitt. If, in answer, to the request of the king of France, conveyed by M. Chauvelin, he had advised the king to declare that he would not allow any interference in the internal government of France, nor any conquest by France under whatever pretext it might be covered, he would probably have saved the king's life, and prevented a war in Europe. He committed the mistake of thinking that England could remain an unconcerned spectator of a war against all liberty on the one side, and all monarchy on the other."

But nations are a scourge in the hand of God to chastise each other for the contempt of his sovereign power. The profligacy of the higher ranks in France, and their oppression of the lower, cried aloud for vengeance. Not more righteous, not more marked, as a divine retribution, was the destruction of the seven nations of Canaan, whom the land spued out for their transgressions, than the judgments which fell on France. Great Britain, too, in proportion to her high privileges, only the less guilty of the two, deserved and received a dreadful chastisement. We of this generation know little of the sufferings which that great French war of one and twenty years inflicted on the land. It was many years before a single victory by land cheered our armies, and the waste of human life was frightful. The grinding oppression of taxation, the high price of food, and the crippled state of trade and commerce, carried misery into thousands of homes, and bowed into the dust many a strong and sturdy spirit. Happily for England, there was amongst us a remnant of the men who, like those of old, never ceased to sigh and to

cry for all the abominations that were done in the midst thereof. And when the destroying angel sheathed his sword, and Europe was at rest, England emerged from that long and dreadful contest with a deeper sense of God's unmerited goodness, and of her own national short-comings.

A third volume is wanting to give the short administration and concluding life of Mr. Fox; and we shall look for it with interest. The work, as we have said, will not be popular; for it is the record, if the noble author's views be correct, of wise counsels despised, and of national calamities produced by national pride. We must not be supposed to accept implicitly all the conclusions of our author. Yet he is entitled to be heard, and heard he will be, in other lands, perhaps, more distinctly than at home; for the faults of England, whether real or imaginary, are no unwelcome topic among foreigners.

His Lordship will, we trust, draw, ere he concludes, in stronger colours, what seems to us to be the one great moral of Mr. Fox's life; that no talents, however brilliant-no position, however exalted-no circumstances, however favourable, compensate, even in this life, for the absence of high religious principle. His Lordship writes the public, not the private, life of the great political leader; but he writes for his countrymen, and more especially, perhaps, for the rising politicians of his own party, who now justly regard him with a higher respect than Fox ever won. Can it be beneath him to remind them, as he stands by the grave of his great predecessor, that the homage of a listening parliament, and even the consciousness of ruling well, are not the highest objects of human ambition; or that he that is least in the kingdom of heaven has a more glorious name than any which this world can offer to the most successful and most idolized of her votaries?

HYMNOLOGY: GERMAN AND ENGLISH.

AMONG other differences in the outward characteristics of the German and English reformations in the sixteenth century, we are struck at once by the presence of a poetical literature in the one case, and its absence in the other. The devotional songs of the early German reformers constituted a very marked feature in the great religious movement of their Fatherland, and helped in no small degree to propagate there the doctrines and the spirit of Protestantism. It was in 1524 that Luther published his "Gesangbuch;" a collection of hymns for the public worship and private edification of his followers. To this work several of his

coadjutors in the reformation contributed, but most were furnished by himself; and it was by these hymns, the utterances of his heart in all the varied moods of his spiritual experience, even more than by his translation of the scriptures, that his individual character and personal influence were infused into the church which arose under his auspices.

There was nothing of the same kind in England. There, neither the great masters of divinity who conducted the movement, nor the lesser lights who figure with them in the pages of Foxe, seem ever to have thought of turning their efforts into the channel of sacred song. The idea, indeed, seems altogether alien to the conception we form of their character and deportment. Sir Humphrey Davy wrote sonnets; Sir Charles Ñapier wrote a romance; and it was with some surprise we first became acquainted with these lighter achievements of men known to us only by their eminence in science or in war; but we confess our astonishment would be greater to light on a hitherto unsuspected volume of devotional lyrics by Cranmer, Hooper, Ridley or Latimer. Nor, if it be said (in spite of Luther's example) that the weighty avocations of those distinguished men allowed them no leisure for rhyming, would effusions of a similar nature from the pen of Rogers or of Rowland Taylor, of Bradford or of Barnes, strike us as less incongruous.

It is manifest, that not only the character of the leading men who brought about the ecclesiastical revolution, but that also of the people who accepted it, must have been dissimilar, to have caused so marked a difference in the two cases. Had the people of England been susceptible of lyrical enthusiasm in their sacred cause, they would most assuredly have found or made a poet to stir them. They were as much in earnest as their transmarine co-religionists, but no holy "song book" appeared to kindle their devotion. The only attempt of the kind that was made, fell dead as to any effect it had on the national mind: and inflammable indeed must have been the materials that could be fired by such a torch. Thomas Sternhold, Esq., groom of the robes to king Henry VIII., and a personal favorite of that monarch, did take upon him to versify the psalms of David, hoping thereby, as he said, to provide the courtiers with a proper antidote and substitute for their licentious songs. The attempt was an imitation of one that had already been made in France, and had great success there while the connection between psalm-singing in the vernacular, and revolt against the authority of Rome, was as yet unperceived. Clement Marot, a poet of the court of Francis I., had put forth metrical translations of fifty-two of the psalms; and his version had created quite a furor among the princes, nobles, and ladies of the French court, who set them to their favourite tunes, and quoted them on all the common occasions of life, till their adoption by the Huguenots turned the tide of fashion against them.