only occasion on which the empire exhibited itself as really an international power, was when Sigismund convened the Council of Constance. Aided by an Avignonese pontiff, Henry VII. seemed to achieve a momentary triumph for the empire; but the Tuscan fever, and the poisoned chalice in the Eucharist, triumphed over the heroic emperor, A.D. 1313; and with him ends the history of the empire im Italy, and Dante's book is an epitaph instead of a prophecy.' Mr. Bryce gives an interesting sketch of Rome and its politics in her middle age, with notices of Arnold, Rienzi, and Porcaro, the last martyr of the cause of municipal independence. The failure to attain freedom during the three centuries which lie between Arnold and Porcaro, the author ascribes to the disadvantage under which Rome laboured of possessing neither that foreign trade nor manufacturing industry which enabled Venice, Pisa, and Genoa, to attain such eminence. With an inadequate harbour at a distance, and a desert at her gates, the productive energies of Rome have been paralyzed for centuries. But we can hardly resist the conviction that in an age when commercial success is the all-in-all of national or municipal existence, this whole condition of things will be changed, and that, whether Rome becomes the Italian capital or a free city, she may yet, by a sudden revival of trade, attain the wealth which is ascribed to her in the language of divine mystery. Maximilian, the most notable of the late emperors, who followed his ancestor, Rudolf, after an interval of two centuries, was really the founder of the Hapsburg dynasty. The empire became hereditary about the same time that the Eastern empire passed away, and a new world was discovered; and it must ever remain one of the wonders of history that, at such a juncture, both empire and papacy failed to realize the gain; that release from the jealousy and power of a rival brought no increase of vigour to the one; that the commercial zeal of that remarkable time brought no wealth or energy to the Eternal City; that the discovery of another world to be evangelized, and the sense one would have thought inevitable of increased responsibility, brought neither purer counsels nor clearer insight to the self-styled Universal Bishop. All the advantages of that great crisis, which so gifted a prince as Charles V. was so well qualified to gather in, were wasted through the evil counsels of the Vatican, and the insolence with which a sensual pontiff repulsed a German monk. The work of Luther was consummated in the peace of Westphalia. The empire had become identified with the house of Hapsburg; and that memorable council was influenced in no slight degree by the writings of Hippolytus à Lapide, more familiarly known to us by his real name of Chemnitz, who, * arguing against the whole Romano-papal idea of the empire, did not hesitate to urge in so many words, Domus Austriacæ extirpatio. The empire lingered on, impotent for good. It could neither prevent the seizure of Silesia nor the partitionment of Poland, to a chieftain of which unhappy nation the imperial princes were indebted for deliverance from the Turk. The house of Hapsburg had supplied in many instances respectable princes, but their policy was invariably dictated by selfishness, the worst vice a ruler can be guilty of. It is difficult to guess what change, if any, would have been given to the course of events had the wishes of half the Electoral College in 1658 been successful; and the crown bestowed on Louis XIV., who afterwards used to be called the Hereditary Enemy of the Holy Empire.' It was but one of many projects always frustrated, to set aside the Hapsburg family. But another shortly arose to give effect to the policy of Louis. It was Napoleon's intention at one time to oust the Hapsburgs, and himself become the head of the Holy Roman Empire. One is at a loss to conceive how this wonderful man, who went so far on the way as to account himself the successor of Charlemagne, reached this idea so slowly. He had overthrown two emperors; the representatives respectively of the Eastern and Western Cæsars. At this point the Invisible Hand, so often felt in history, gave a new direction to his arms, and reserved for the coming Man of the Earth' the throne of universal monarchy, leaving to the quondam elector of Brandenburg the task of disinheriting the successor of Rudolf and Maximilian. Goethe-it will be our last extract from Mr. Bryce, 'Has described the uneasiness with which in the days of his childhood the burghers of his native Frankfort saw the walls of the Roman Hall covered with the portraits of emperor after emperor, till space was left for few, at last for one. In A.D. 1792, Francis the Second mounted the throne of Augustus, and the last place was filled. Three years before there had arisen in the Western horizon a little cloud no bigger than a man's hand, and now the heaven was black with storms of rain. There was a prophecy dating from the first days of the empire's decline, that when all things were falling to ruin, and nakedness rife in the world, a second Frankish emperor should arise, to purge and heal, to bring back peace, and to purify religion.'-P. 393. Yet here have we another Napoleon, Rome still in his hands and Europe immeshed in his policy, and the empire palpitating under its death-wound. We have followed Mr. Bryce with pleasure, charmed by his ingenuity, gratified by his industry, not surprised by his TransTweedian theology: occasionally conscious of a feeling of weariness arising from his repeating himself. In our estimate of the whole period with its 160 popes,1 we shall perhaps differ from him. We hold that all the good the Holy Roman Empire did, it did indirectly. In this way it fostered amongst the half-civilized nationalities order and law and faith. These it was divinely ordained should increase, while the empire, in accomplishing its mission, like the divine hermit, was ordained to decrease. All this we dutifully and thankfully acknowledge. All the empire's direct aims, with little exception, appear to us either worthless or wicked. The creature of selfishness and fraud, it maintained a feverish existence by the propagation of a falsehood as gross as one of Falstaff's: that it was the heir and representative of the Augustan empire. In any career of conquest and aggression, as that of Napoleon's, we gauge the work done, and the doer of it, on their own merits. But a theocratic institution, not as it fails, but as it is false to its own Nature, must be weighed in other scales, and all the more so because a theocratic institution in Christendom is that same kind of invasion of the rights of the Lord Christ which in the Church is perpetrated by the papal claim of supremacy. Indeed it might be fairly contended that those 'services which we admit the Lower Empire indirectly rendered to Europe, came not from the empire at all, but directly from the refining and softening influences of the Church: and, confirmatory of this, attention might be drawn to the happier history of those kingdoms which were virtually, if not actually, free from imperial influence. The anointed agent of Church and world, the empire, failed in the only two great trials which it was called to face. It neither saved the Church from the Lutheran schism, nor Constantinople from the Turk. Fraud is always fraud, and falsehood falsehood; and it is trifling with the sacred reality of words, and the more responsible conclusions of a sound judgment, to determine differently on these subjects because they happen to come before us in history. And in proportion as we bring ourselves to adopt the true, if severe, criterion as regards the empire, shall we form a truer estimate of the position of the papacy in the middle age. It was the pope who gave realization to the dreams of Charlemagne. He assisted to create the Lower Empire. Whatever indirect services the empire rendered to society, were rendered during the time the pope acknowledged the supremacy of the crown. And so much the less is society indebted to the popes of the middle age. No sooner was the instrument proved to be useful than all the efforts of the popes were directed to undermine and 1 There is a useful Chronological Table prefixed, which gives the names of the popes, 255 in all, not reckoning the anti-popes, about thirty in number. The last is defective in the records of the anti-popes. destroy it; to sap the foundations of all loyalty; to bring in question, ay, and more than bring in question, the inviolability of oaths; to shake-by a frantic diplomacy, which made war a holy institution, and carnage in another sense than the poet recked of the Daughter of God-the very hopes of humanity. The Church herself indeed seems to have been penetrated with a sense of her own utter degradation; and she who, of her previous ninety-eight pontiffs-who ruled from S. Peter included for eight hundred years-had canonized more than one half, has ventured to canonize during her theocratical millennium only five, out of a number reckoning nearly one hundred and sixty. And now, even while we are writing, the heirs of Luther are raking together the spoils of the annihilated empire, and Italy and Rome are demanding to be restored to themselves; and care upon care is weighing down the heart of the aged pontiff, suspicious of his subjects whom his priesthood have never succeeded either in ruling or in converting, and depending upon carnal aid with that immemorial reliance which prompted Leo to call Charles from beyond the Alps. There is no Christian heart-we had almost said there is no human heart-that will refuse to pray for the suffering old man, the prince without a peer to befriend him: the father forsaken of all his own children. Yet be our suffrages rendered not only that he may be comforted and supported, but also that he may be enabled to rise to the full conception of the character of the Apostle whom he represents,the fiefless and homeless pastor of the Church, who claimed no crown, nor from one end of his diocese to the other, from Euphrates to the Tiber, owned earth enough in which to make his grave. May it be granted to Pius IX. to learn, however late, that the theocratical dreams which his office has inherited from the empire, and a love for which seems to constitute the last infirmity of his mind, are, and have ever been, the greatest curse of the Church of God. 110 Essays on Questions Edited by the Rev. 1866. ART. IV.—The Church and the World. It seems to be pretty well understood among littérateurs now that a 'movement,' whether ecclesiastical or secular, theological or scientific, must receive an impetus from a bundle of essays in order to insure its progress. The original 'Oxford Essays' and Cambridge Essays' had no connexion except that which they derived from the binder: but the gentlemen who were bound up in that fagot of Neologian sticks called Essays and Reviews,' did the rough work of pioneers in a novel style of associated literary partnership. Alpine climbing has been stimulated in the same manner. The Irish Church,-that crux of Establishmentarians, has had its volume of Essayists. The Ultramontanists, under the presidency of Dr. Manning, cheered up their drooping spirits, and made a little figure by the like expedient. But all these efforts must give place to the present magnificent enterprise, for the bulk of matter, variety of subject, and number of contributors. This volume contains eighteen essays by as many different writers. The questions treated in its pages range over a wide field; and the list of contents looks like the commingling of papers read at a Social Science meeting and a Church Congress. Infanticide and Clerical Celibacy; Architecture and the Conscience Clause; Hospital Nursing and Ritualism;—these headings give a fair notion of the scope of the book, and justify what we have remarked it. The Editor introduces his goodly company of essayists with a preface, in which he informs us that the several Authors are responsible only for the statements contained in their own 'contributions.' This is a stereotyped formula with which such volumes as the present are labelled. It corresponds to that sinister word limited' which Joint-stock Companies add to the titles of their schemes. We, for our part, confess that we are unable to appreciate the value of this saving clause. It did not protect the notorious Essayists' from being held, each and every of them, a particeps criminis, as regarded the general drift of the book; and why should it do more for our friends now lying before us? Any number of men clubbed together under one Editor to produce a book setting forth certain opinions, besides the part each plays as an individual, conjointly create an atmosphere which we may call the tone, 6 upon |