beautiful spot, with its clumps of stone-pine and date-palms; the whole overhung by red rocky cliffs, studded with the bright crimson cactus. The view over the bay of Palermo, and the fertile plain stretched out at one's feet, especially at sunset, must be seen to be fully understood. The church is of the fifteenth century, and contains nothing remarkable but two or three good frescos. In the centre of the court is a beautiful fountain, and round the church a fine Norman cloister. The graves are most carefully tended by the good monks, and are placed in rows all round the open court. To choose, in this space, a last resting-place for the dying child of a Palermitan physician, had been the object of that day's expedition. A spot was fixed upon near the grave of one of the Sisters of Charity, who had lately paid for her devotion to the sick soldiers with her life. The evening of that day saw the close of that bright and beautiful girl's earthly career; and the next morning the body, decked with the purest white flowers, was borne up the hill to the grave chosen for her by her friend. Yet who would wish to lie in a more lovely spot? And who does not reëcho in his heart the feeling of the Greek poet: "Those whom the gods love die young"?

The Sunday following there was a "popular demonstration;" that is, there was a dirty rabble of two or three thousand people, who paraded the streets in procession, carrying banners, on which were inscribed "Morte ai Preti," with bloody handkerchiefs on pikes, and one and all screaming, "Viva Garibaldi !" The government did not attempt to interfere. The mob vowed a special yengeance against a certain priest, noted for his holiness, but also for his devotion to the Roman See. He was to preach that day at the monastery of Valverde, and to do so would have had to traverse the armed mass who were plotting his destruction. Information, however, was conveyed to him of the danger of his position, just before leaving his own house, and he was persuaded not to risk a life so valuable by imprudent exposure. Suspicion at this time fell upon all who would not openly declare themselves partisans of the Garibaldian faction. The greater portion of the Palermitan nobility had left the place; and those that remained lived entirely among themselves, refusing to attend the balls or parties at the prefecture. The Piedmontese officers complained bitterly that they were treated just as the Lombards had treated the Austrians at Milan-that no one would ask them to their houses, and that at public places no one would dance or associate with them. On the other hand, the Princess C., who had endeavoured, as far as possible, to keep clear of all political parties, found her town-house bombarded by the Nea

politan troops, and her country-house ransacked and plundered of every thing by the followers of Garibaldi; while their fine château in the interior was seized by the government, and converted into a military prison.

Even an English lady did not escape suspicion. She had rented a house belonging to a devoted Bourbonist, who had never been known to let his palazzo before. Therefore it was conjectured that he must have had a special motive for doing so, and that the stranger lady was employed on a secret mission to bring about a Bourbon revolution. If it were objected to this view, that the lady lived very quietly, and never went out in the evening, it was answered by "Well, that's the very proof. What can she be doing all alone, except plotting ?" If she set up a soup-kitchen, or endeavoured in any way to relieve the misery around her, she was supposed to be "currying favour with the lower classes." No domiciliary visits, however, were attempted; but spies were set over her, and all her letters opened and read, and detained so long in the process, that at last she sent a message to the head of the post-office, "that he was most welcome to her correspondence if he would only let her have her letters first." This state of things, however, determined her to curtail her stay; and a few days after Easter she and her children sailed from Palermo, leaving behind them many pleasant loving memories; and hoping that the day might not be far distant when peace and good government would replace the present hopeless anarchy and confusion.

M. Guizot's Meditations.*

WHEN, some two years ago, M. Guizot published his Méditations sur l'Essence de la Religion Chrétienne, he announced at the same time that the volume then placed before the public was but the first of a series. After examining the "essence" of Christianity, he intended to proceed to its history. He would examine the authenticity of Scripture, the causes of the success of the founders of our religion; he would trace the path of the Church across the long succession of ages to the great crisis of the sixteenth century; he would give an account of Catholics and Protestants, as well as of the movement and action of the anti-Christian spirit in modern society. This was to form the second series of his Meditations. The third was to embrace a review of the actual state of Christianity; the religious revival of the nineteenth century, Catholic and Protestant, with some account of the spiritualist philosophy and the anti-Christian movement which our own days have witnessed. Finally, M. Guizot having dealt with the past and with the present, would take in hand the future; he would point out the ways by which the Christian religion is "called to conquer completely and rule morally this little corner of the universe which we call our earth, in which the designs and the power of God are unfolding themselves, as no doubt they also unfold themselves in an infinity of worlds unknown to us." (Pref. p. viii.)

We have quoted these last words of the illustrious French writer with no satirical purpose, but because they are so extremely characteristic of M. Guizot. He is, beyond all things, a lecturer; and a lecturer is necessarily open to the temptations of what seem to be large and comprehensive views of history, generalisations of facts not always sound, an imaginary keenness of divination as to the principles which underlie the complex activity of men and nations, a magisterial style of passing sentence on a century, a school, a religion in a single paragraph. It is given to few men to combine immense acquaintance with the materials of history with philosophical precision and wideness of view in classifying and connecting facts in a degree sufficient to fit them for the task * Méditations sur l'Etat actuel de la Religion Chrétienne, par M. Guizot. Paris, 1866.

VOL. V.

X

which M. Guizot has undertaken to fulfil in the second (projected) series of his Meditations. But M. Guizot seems to speak of it with as much coolness as if it required no higher or rarer powers than such as are enough for the luminous exposition of the policy of a ministry or the main features of a budget. Nor does it appear that he has the slightest suspicion that he may be at some disadvantage as a philosophical Church historian from the fact that he can only look at the Christianity of at least sixteen centuries from a position which makes it almost impossible for him to throw himself into its spirit, or, what is more essential still, to understand more than in part its moving principles and dominant impulses. Whatever M. Guizot writes is clear, well stated, interesting, and conscientious: he is wonderfully impartial for a Protestant, but impartiality is not intuition. There is nothing egotistic or offensive in the serenity with which he looks forth on the world around him, its past and its future, from his retirement at Val Richer; but the work he has undertaken requires the ken of a prophet, or at all events that power of seeing every thing in its due perspective and proportion which nothing but Catholicism can give. M. Guizot may see and say a great deal that is true; he is not at the centre,

"Whence all may be discerned in clear harmonious ring ;"

and though he may have few prejudices and no passions to warp his judgment, it must of necessity be inadequate, and even in some respects distorted.

We need not, however, anticipate the verdict which may have some day to be given on M. Guizot's description of the past centuries of Christianity. Inverting the order of his proposed Meditations, he has left the past to take care of itself, and given us at once his views as to the present state of our religion. His last publication contains some interesting chapters on the religious reaction in France since the Great Revolution-on Spiritualism, Rationalism, Positivism, Materialism, Pantheism, Scepticism, and Impiety, in their several manifestations during the present century. We cannot, of course, expect any great abundance of details in sketches like those before us. M. Guizot aims at characterising in a few pages the principles and tendencies of the movements which he recognises as so influential; and when he deals with personal or literary character he is equally concise, though he is seldom happier or more interesting than in those parts of his volume in which he is thus engaged. On the whole, though slight, his descriptions are wonderfully broad, masterly, and comprehensive. They are not detailed

enough to satisfy general readers, who delight in anecdote and narrative, and have little previous acquaintance with the subject; but they will approve themselves as thoughtful, judicial, and candid to the smaller and higher circles for whom M. Guizot writes. He has made himself so great a name in the world both of literature and politics, that we are constrained to listen with attention to his remarks on the men and schools of his own day. His utterances will long survive, and will have to be consulted by any one who writes the history of our times; but they are not that history. Perhaps, also, one of their chief interests will always consist in the light they throw on the history of thought in France, as records rather of their author's reflections than of the facts among which he has lived. Though M. Guizot cannot be cited as a typical Frenchman, his mind, as mirrored in his works, can still be taken as, in many respects, a fair measure by which the best French opinion and feeling on many most important matters may be gauged.

What

Looking back in his old age on the progress of religion in France since the early years of the present century, M. Guizot is of course struck with the wonderful fertility and vigour of growth manifested by the Church from the time that the Concordat of Napoleon restored her altars and set her priests free from the ban of proscription. It is almost inevitable that a thinker in his position should attach rather too much importance to the influence of writers and other distinguished men in a reaction of this kind. The progress of religion in a Catholic country may depend to a great extent upon the activity and prudence of a few men who are its instruments as well as its evidences, its conquests as well as its guides. these men say and do is on the surface, obvious to every observer. But the tide rises from below; it is the irrepressible swelling of thousands of hearts, in each one of which the work of grace is silently going on, revealing the change it has wrought, in one after another, by a general rise of thought, feeling, and conduct. The flood gains height and volume imperceptibly, and so saps and sweeps away obstacles that formerly towered above it, by its own weight and force. M. Guizot is hardly able to comprehend this in all its significancy. But he gives us a very interesting sketch of the chief features of the revival which has been so long going on in France; and his remarks on Chateaubriand, De Bonald, De Maistre, and De la Mennais, are profound, clear, and philosophical. We must take exception-as exception has already been taken in France-to some remarks he has made on what he considers to be the principles of another great agent in the religious revival-the Society of Jesus. One of the least creditable passages of M. Guizot's own career as a minister,