bidden in the First Commandment, and idolatry in the Second, is that of the Jews." If Dr. Littledale had studied the criticism of the Old Testament even superficially, he would have been aware that it is nothing of the kind. Perhaps it once was that of the Jews, for it is recognized by Philo and Josephus, though there is no proof that this mode of division was ever universally received in the Jewish Church. But (1) the Talmud, the Targum of Jonathan, and the Rabbinical commentators generally, reckon "ten words" of which the first is the preface "I am the Lord thy God," &c., the second the prohibition of polytheism and idolatry. This division is maintained by the Jews at the present day, so that on the point at issue the Jews agree, and have for anyhow over 1200 years, agreed with us, not, as Dr. Littledale says, with Calvinists and Anglicans. Moreover, the modern Catholic division is the only one consistent with the Hebrew text, as usually found in MSS. and printed copies. The text of the Decalogue is divided into ten sections, each parted off by a setuma, and these sections correspond precisely with our Catholic division. These sections are admitted to be very ancient, to be older even than the Masoretic text, and the Protestant scholar, Kennicott, found them so marked in 460 out of 694 MSS. which he collated. The facts as here given are familiar to Hebrew scholars. They will be found in the Commentaries of Kalisch, Ruohl, and Keil, The first is a very learned Jew, the second a learned Rationalist, the third a learned Protestant of the Conservative school. All of them are opposed to the Catholic mode of division, but they know their business, and most assuredly would decline to go to work like Dr. Littledale. W. E. ADDIS.

The Life of Christ. By S. BONAVENTURE. Translated and Edited by the Rev. W. W. HUTCHINGS, M.A., Sub-warden of the House of Mercy, Clewer. London: Rivingtons, 1881.

Mr.

E regard with mixed feelings the dealings of Anglican editors with the writings of Catholics. We are, of course, very glad that such writings should be made accessible in any degree "to those who are without." On the other hand, in their passage through heretical intellects they invariably suffer, even if they escape the distortion and perversion which are euphemistically called "adaptation." Hutchings' version seems to have been executed with care and with honesty of purpose. But the spirit in which he has approached his task may be sufficiently inferred from the following sentence in his Preface: "Here and there," he tells us, "an expression has been slightly modified, or left out, with regard to the Mother of our Lord. Even the title, Mother of God,' though it has the authority of a General Council, has not been inserted. . . . . It cannot be denied that the warmth of S. Bonaventure's character, and his passion for mysticism, betrayed him into expressions of excessive devotion towards the Blessed Virgin in some of his works" (Int., p. xvi.). Now we put it to Mr. Hutchings—we trust we may do so without offencewho is he that he should presume to sit in judgment upon a Saint and Doctor of the Church? and lay to the charge of God's elect either excess or "deficiency" of devotion?

66

...

THE

DUBLIN REVIEW.

OCTOBER, 1881.

ART. I.—THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

PART. IV.

1. History of English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. By LESLIE STEPHEN. In Two Volumes. London: 1876.

By

2. History of England in the Eighteenth Century. WILLIAM EDWARD HARTPOLE LECKY. Vols. I. and II. London: 1878.

3. The Works of Lord Macaulay. In Eight Volumes. Edited by Lady TREVELYAN. London: 1873.

4. Histoire de la Littérature Anglaise. Par H. TAINE. Five Volumes. Second Edition. Paris: 1869.

5. Parliamentary History of England, from the Earliest Period to 1803. By COBBETT, WRIGHT, and others. In Thirty-six Volumes. London: 1806-1836.

6. The Works of the Rev. John Wesley. In Fourteen Volumes. London: 1829.

7. The Constitutional History of England from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George II. By HENRY HALLAM. In Three Volumes. Eighth Edition. London: 1855.

8. The Constitutional History of England since the Accession of George III. 1760-1860. By Sir THOMAS ERSKINE MAY, K.C.B. In Three Volumes. Sixth Edition. London: 1878.

I

APPROACH in this paper the last portion of a task to which I set myself two years ago. I shall now endeavour to complete, in such rough outline as is possible to me here, the survey upon which I then entered of the political and VOL. VI. NO. II. [Third Series.]

Y

spiritual history of Europe during the hundred years between the English and the French Revolutions-that is to say, between 1688 and 1788. It is not one of the least of the disadvantages of dealing with so large a subject in a periodical publication, that a writer is obliged either to repeat himself, or to impose upon his readers references to what he has previously written references which, from lack of leisure or patience, are seldom, in fact, made. I prefer the first of these alternatives, and choose rather to risk the reproach of wearying by "a twicetold tale" than to present the several instalments of my essay without the elucidations which may be necessary for rightly judging of my argument. My general principle is this: that in looking at history large views alone are safe and scientific. A great writer has well remarked that much which passes current under that name is "a tissue of dry and repulsive nomenclature." It is not too much to say that the matter which forms the staple of the older annalists and chroniclers is really the portion of the past which is of the least importance to us. Wars, treaties, dynasties, are not the most noteworthy phenomena of the public order. Not only religion, laws, literature, manners, but even trade, agriculture, and the inventions and discoveries of the physical sciences, are of more account than the battles, the diplomacy, the generation of monarchs. It has been the work of the last hundred years to revolutionize, among much else, the writing of history; to turn it from a mere narrative into a science. One effect of this change has been greatly to enlarge the task of the historian. It is not enough that he should present correctly the facts-the salient facts, that is-of the epoch with which he concerns himself. He must present them in their due proportion and proper collocation, and point to their significance. The civilization of a people is but its history expressed in its manners. The phenomena of national life are but the visible manifestations of the spirit which animates society. To pass from phenomena to ideas, beneath "the garment of time" to find the "time spirit "-such is now the high argument to which the historian must address himself. This has been well pointed out by one who had a peculiar right to be heard upon such a subject, and whose words I gladly borrow to supplement and authorize my own.

When you have the facts which history furnishes [writes the late Mr. Brewer] there is yet something more required, a power of insight into these facts and their meaning which, if not native, is only to be acquired by patient and humble study. History is thus a part of that great revelation which all arts, all science, and all literature is gradually unfolding before our eyes. It is helping us, like these other branches of philosophy, to see things as they are; it is help

ing to disencumber us of those images and delusions-that slavery to present sense and present objects-which stand between us and the truth. Nay, more, it is bringing us to the knowledge of what is true, permanent and substantial, apart from the mere outward forms and phantoms we are so apt to mistake for it; enabling us to disengage the errors, dogmas, and systems of men from the truths which they sought to maintain; to see a light in the thickest darkness, an order, not of human but divine appointment, vindicating itself among the loudest clamours and deepest confusions of

* our race.

Such were some of the thoughts present to my mind when I began to write about the Eighteenth Century. "To grasp its dominant ideas, and to view its transactions in the light of them," was, as it seemed to me, the only way of forming a true conception of its history. And throughout the continent of Europe the ideas dominant appeared to be those introduced or rather reaffirmed four hundred years ago. "I regard the eighteenth century," I wrote, "as the closing years of a period in the history of Europe; as the years in which the ideas animating that period are to be seen in their ultimate development and final resolution. I speak of the period which began with the movement known, according as one or another of its aspects is contemplated, as the Protestant Reformation, the Revival of Letters, the Rise of the New Monarchy, and which ended with the French Revolution-a period which may, with much propriety, be designated the Renaissance Epoch. For this movement was essentially a re-birth, and what was re-born was Materialism." I went on to observe how this character is written upon it, as in every other department of human life, so especially upon its politics and its philosophy, and how in the public order its most perfect type is presented to us in its Absolutist Monarchies, modelled upon the Louis Quatorze pattern, and in the intellectual province in the teaching of the French Encyclopædists. The Eighteenth Century, I remarked, was emphatically le siècle Français. "Everywhere, throughout the continent of Europe, while the monarchs of the age, following the example of Louis the Fourteenth, were triumphing over the last remains of mediæval liberty, and carrying to its complete development the Cæsarism which is the political idea of the Renaissance, its intellectual idea, embodied in the doctrines of the philosophes, issued in ferocious animalism." So much must suffice here as to the nature and scope of my argument. Those who would follow it in detail I must refer to the papers in which I have traced the progress of the Renaissance idea, first in the public order, and then

"English Studies," p. 381.

in the philosophical, throughout continental Europe during the last century. I now turn to our country. I shall in the first place point out how remarkable a contrast it presents to the general course of European development; and secondly, I shall inquire to what cause our happiness in this respect is due.

Lord Stanhope introduces his well-known historical work* by instituting a comparison between the era of the Georges in England and the era of the Antonines in Rome. I do not know whether the analogy is very felicitous; but certainly we may say that the whole period of our history with which I am here concerned the century between 1688 and 1788-and not merely that portion of it with which Lord Stanhope deals, has, in common with the age of the philosophic Cæsars, the notes of material greatness and successful war. And we may yield full assent, too, to his proposition, that with us this prosperity did not depend upon the character of a single man. Rome, so long accustomed to conquer others, had made "a shameful conquest of herself" long before the time of the Antonines; and underneath the fallacious glories of a benevolent despotism, the bases of the public order were swiftly and irretrievably decaying. The foundations whereon the greatness of our country rested in the last century, were ancient free institutions, which as it advanced were continuously strengthened, consolidated, and developed. From 1688 to 1788 the history of England is essentially the history of the sure growth of constitutional freedom, of civil and religious liberty. It is indeed a general law that

checks and disasters

Live in the veins of actions highest reared;

and the progress of our country in the epoch of which I am writing is no exception to this law. Thus the age of Anne was in few particulars a period of improvement: in not a few it was certainly a period of retrogression. Mr. Lecky reckons, and I think with justice, the Schism Act passed in 1714 to crush the seminaries of Dissenters, and to deprive them of the means of educating their children in their own religious opinions, "one of the most tyrannical measures enacted in the Eighteenth Century."† And he added, what is undoubtedly true, that during the latter years of the Queen's reign, political and religious liberty were in extreme danger. So, too, the first twenty years of George III.'s reign were full of the struggles of that monarch to increase his prerogative, struggles which, as Sir

"The History of England from the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Versailles, 1713-1783." By Lord Mahon. In seven volumes. Third edition. 1853.

+ "History of England in the Eighteenth Century," vol. i. p. 95.