attraction to the most worldly class of ecclesiastics, and to families of influence who hoped to raise one of their number to the highest stations in the church. The pomps of secular sovereignty could not fail to increase the tendency in the Roman system towards gorgeous rites imposing upon the senses and the imagination, but deadly to the spirit. The Popes being occupied in worldly schemes, and their creatures, whether cardinals or officers of government, being to a great degree appointed without regard to character, how could corruption fail to fasten itself upon the whole system. This worldliness, which was at its height about the time of the reformation, was acknowledged and mourned over by serious Roman Catholics, but as it put them in the background and exalted the unworthy, their moral power was greatly abridged. It brought in its train the most revolting hypocrisy in the performance of religious ceremonies, a systematic sanctity of demeanor covering and darkening the wickedness of the soul. And these examples in high places could not fail to cast their baleful poisonous shade upon the lower ecclesiastics in Italy and other Catholic countries. It is true that the papal court became more pure and decent after the reformation had turned men's eyes towards its foulness; but a court so constituted could never wash itself entirely clean from its defilements.

From this corrupting, demoralizing temporal power, this pestilential cloak which has tainted all that it covered, this source of divisions and intrigues in Italy, this attraction to the worldly minded, the Roman church is now set free. On the ninth of February of this year, the constituent assembly, sitting at Rome, resolved almost unanimously, that "the popedom has fallen in fact as well as in law from the temporal government of the Roman states." Whether this latest resolve of the deputies of the Roman republic is to be carried into successful effect, or whether like that revolution which cost Arnold of Brescia his life, it is to die and to involve many who believe themselves patriots in its ruins, we have already declined to decide. Our business will be completed by trying to answer the question what effect this loss of secular power, if permanent, will have on the Catholic church.

And in the first place, suppose not only this power but the entire office of Pope to cease, the Roman Catholic church is not of course extinct. Wherever there is a priest to stand between a congregation and God, to be the appointed means of performing the sacrifice of the mass, and of absolving from sin, there is the Roman Catholic church; and though without a head, it might throw itself upon its spiritual unity, or upon the unity of general councils. It has existed during interregnums in the papacy that have lasted for years. It has existed through a schism

as long as the wandering of the Israelites in the desert. It might exist, with some modification of its theory of unity, after the office of Pope had passed away, as the Jewish religion has existed for ages without a state, a temple, or a high priest. What is it that binds the self-torturing flagellant to his church? Not that there is a Pope, but that he can within this pale gratify his religious wants by self-expiation. What is it that binds the Catholic mystic to his church? Not the magnificence of the papal palaces or works of art, but that he can feed his imagination through ancient symbols, and invest with unreal beauty and galvanic life the dead forms of his ritual.

We are of course not making this supposition under the impression that it will be realized, but only for the purpose of setting forth the obvious truth, that Roman Catholic principles are of greater strength and wider compass than any Roman Catholic institution. Let us now make a less violent supposition; that the revolution just announced to the world is to be permanent, that the Pope is never to recover his power. What will be the effect of this important event upon the spirit of the Roman Catholic world, upon their attachment to the system of which the papacy is the head.

Here again we see no reason to believe that the first effect may not be to strengthen the zeal, and revive the feeling of unity, in that great communion which acknowledges the Pope as its ecclesiastical head. For there would be the spectacle presented of the trappings and the tinsel cast off, of the adventitious causes of opprobium laid aside, of a Pope without a pampered train of menials, and a corrupt court, a Pope resembling that humble monk Coelestin V, who gladly exchanged the papal robes and palace for his hermit's weeds and cell, rather than a hawking Leo X, or a Julius II. at the head of his armies. Is it not evident that the first effect upon the most spiritual members of the Roman Catholic communion, as soon as the natural dread of change shall have passed away, will be one of satisfaction and increased attachment to a system thus purified? Nor can we doubt that this must result in giving the more religious part of that church the preponderancy, and of making all feel that its success must depend upon greater purity and attention to its duties. Appointments, too, to high stations, will be made on other principles, not to reward Italian noble families, to whom the church stripped of temporal power will hold out no attractions, but to bring forward. the learned and dexterous controvertist like Wiseman, the eloquent preacher like Lacordaire, the mortified monk or laborious missionary, the men who, if any, can restore a church nearly ruined by a worldly spirit. The very danger into which the church is brought, or thought to be brought, by this event, may awaken new zeal. It may be also that a change in its policy

will be effected; that having leaned for a long period chiefly on the great, so as to be thought favorable to despotism, it will now lean upon the people. It is possible that a new order may arise. within its bosom more sagacious than the Jesuits, which by its preaching and strict life shall take hold of the popular mind, and identify itself as a kind of tribunitial power with the people against the kings.

It appears to us that much of what we have here thrown out as conjectural, is likely to prove true: there will be reform in the papal palace consequent upon this loss of power, and it can not fail to run downwards throngh all the brauches of the system. But here another question arises. Can such reform go on without endangering the church? Has not the obstinate resistance to reforms, so often offered with success, implied a consciousness that the abuses were pillars of the building? Would not so great a change as the Pope's loss of temporal power involve, by moral necessity, other changes, which would destroy the identity of the church, and make her Protestant, or we should rather say Christian, before she knew it. Let us see.

The Romish system is one of the most wonderful devices of man. It has falsehood enough in it to make its influence pernicious, and Christian truth enough to excuse or even hallow its falsehoods. Its character and position are decided by this blending. If the truth which it has in its possession were to be divorced from the falsehood, it would be a church of Christ in the best sense; if the falsehood were to stand alone, the church would not exist a year. Now the tendency of the loss of temporal power is towards reform, and though we might suppose a formal and exterior reformation to arise without any gain to the cause of truth in the church, such a result is not likely. When this great reform is carried, it becomes more likely that the celibacy of the clergy will go next, and some other abuse more essential to the system will follow. The church begins now to see that it can not build itself a tower above the floods of great political movements. May it not, seeing the inevitable necessity of things, cease to oppose the free movement of mind among the laity, and even strive to educate them more in its principles, and thus prepare them to be emancipated from their fetters?

And this leads us to say that this event must be viewed not by itself, but in connexion with the whole spirit and tendency of the age. It has appeared in the course of our remarks, that a great number of Popes have fled away or lived away from Rome; and that twice they have seen Rome under a revolutionary government of the people. But no consequences followed or could follow. Things returned to their old track. All these convulsions told no more on the progress of the church than a breeze tells on the progress of a rail car. There was no laity to think

and study for itself; no possibility of successful resistance to power. But now the case is changed throughout the civilized world; and perhaps the most powerful force in society is a class of laymen educated and independent, who are trying to work out the problems of national destiny and can not be put down, Clerical authority is on the ebb, considered as the authority of men who have been ordained and are necessary to the validity of certain rites, and not of those who have the talents, learning and worth to make themselves felt. Now with this great cause of increasing strength in the world, the whole system of Romanism will require a thorough examination, the results of which we do not doubt. We do look then on the proceedings at Rome, as indicating what the Italian statesmen will think when religious liberty shall be understood and practiced through their states. We look on them as a pledge that enlightened Roman Catholic laymen will take hold of other corrupt and corrupting parts of the system; that in an age when no fear of ecclesiastical censures can scare them, they will demand, by a force of opinion too strong to be resisted, the removal of one grievance after another, until their church shall have become purified without losing its organic identity, or shall have given place to a new organization in which the true church shall be perpetuated.

ART. II. TENNYSON'S PRINCESS.

The Princess: a Medley; by ALFRED TENNYSON. Boston: William D. Ticknor & Co.

MANY readers have confessed the disappointment which they felt upon their first acquaintance with The Princess' and perhaps nothing but the want of equal frankness has kept back many others from the same confession. Though not extensively read in this country, Mr. Tennyson had come to be rated, according to his fame at home, as first among the English poets of the present generation. A large class of readers, who had taken this opinion upon trust, were looking to see it confirmed in his forthcoming poem, which, as the public were assured in sundry notices, was to be the longest and the most elaborate of his productions. Great in many cases was their disappointment, when, instead of a second Paradise Lost, they found what seemed to them only a grotesque extravaganza about 'woman's rights.' But there were others, old admirers of the poet, familiar with his earlier pieces; who had dwelt delighted on the splendid pomp of his 'Morte d'Arthur,' the epic breadth of his Ulysses,' the energy and passion

of his 'Locksley Hall,' that miracle of condensation; and who were now expecting to find all the merits of their favorite's youthful genius, united and exalted in this effort of his riper years. But lo instead of the Gothic cathedral or the Egyptian pyramid on which their hopes were fixed, they see, much to their surprise, only a glittering castle in the air. Chagrined to find the work so different from their preconceptions, they shut their eyes to its indisputable merits. Its grace and gayety, its genial humor, its aptness of expression, its brilliancy of coloring go for little with those whose minds were set on greater things. Qualities which might have pleased them in a Christmas romance or a fairy tale for children, seem out of place in what they had predestined for the master-piece of a great poet. Still they read on hopeful of a change; hoping that suddenly as by some flourish of an enchanter's wand, the fantastic air-castle may settle down into the solidity and solemnity of the Egyptian pyramid. Nor are there wanting here and there tokens of such a metamorphosis; the colors seem to deepen; the forms to take on fixity and definiteness; laughing extravagance to give signs of earnestness and truth. These appearances, however, prove illusory: the edifice, though more imposing than it looked at first, has yet neither substance nor foundation: it is thin air, and not genuine brick and mortar; the baseless fabric of a vision,' without strength or unity or grandeur. And so the disappointed reader shuts his book, doubting his past convictions of its author's genius, and renouncing, for the time at least, his faith in Tennyson.

On

Not a few, it is believed, will recognize in this description a tolerably accurate rehearsal of their own experience. Even of those, whose first impressions were more favorable, few perhaps would say that the work fully satisfied their expectations. the other hand, fewer still would venture to deny that there is much in it which is excellent and admirable. The severest critic must acknowledge, that its faults, however serious, are redeemed by many beauties of detail. A recollection of its beauties has won back the complainer, recovering from the first flurry of his disappointment, to a reperusal of the poem. Reading now as one who having formed his judgment is no longer forced to play the critic, he proceeds in a more cheerful mood, with a mind more open to all sources of enjoyment. Things, which at first offended him, are grown familiar, so that if they do not please they at least cease to be offensive. At the same time, new felicities and beauties, hitherto unnoticed, rise before him: they gather and grow thick about him, as he advances: and when he has a second time attained the goal, he is ready to retract, if he has not quite forgotten them, his former disparaging criticisms.

It is impossible to do justice to the work in any abstract of its story; and yet we know not how to make the criticisms which we have to offer, intelligible without some statement of the plot.