6

it irks the heart,' is a Scotticism, for which, of course, there is an apology in the writer's nationality; and it, at least, is intelligible to the English reader: but will the same apology serve for such an expression as this 'there they lie in chains of darkness dreeing the everlasting penance'? Again, the purer taste of his later days would surely have blotted out such a sentence as this:- A thousand angels of darkness are aye endeavouring to scarf up the bright sign of mercy in the 'heavens.' What does he mean? Scarfing' is a technical word with joiners; and an affected blue-stocking might use it to express the putting on of her shawl, but Irving had no business with it. And yet he seems to have admired it, for in another place he talks of 'scarfing up of the glory of the everlasting Word.' We have also such obsolete phrases as, A stound of pain,' 'thrêues of despair,' 'reaved away,' vie them in Thy hot displeasure.' It should be remarked that the whole of these examples are taken from his earliest essay in literature-the 'Argument for Judgment to Come;' and that that work exhibits a larger proportion of such faults than any other of equal extent. But the defects in Irving's style sink into insignificance when placed by the side of its merits. If he indulged now and then in Scotticisms or archaisms, he always used them with a vigour which went far to extenuate the liberty he took; if his sentences be occasionally turgid and grandiose in their wording, they cannot be called pointless or feeble; if his command of language led him sometimes into prolixity, it never betrayed him into obscurity; and, although his tropes and similitudes are now and then inappropriate and grotesque, they are far oftener happy and sublime. Irving is one of the few writers who combine clearness of statement with grandeur of language. launches forth boldly upon the sea of speculation, and never loses himself, or bewilders his reader. There is no flight of rhetoric too lofty for him to attempt, and in no attempt is he ever baffled. It was said of Gibbon, in contrast with Hume, that while the latter writes up to the subject, the former gives the idea of writing down to it; and so of Irving it may truly be remarked, that we trace in his works the master's rather than the labourer's hand. His eloquence is yet fresh in the memories of men now living; and when we compare the traditions which cling to his name with the evidence which is furnished by his writings, we conclude that his pulpit oratory was not simply impressive it must have been overwhelming.

He

72

ART. III.—The Holy Roman Empire. By JAMES BRYCE, B.C.L. Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. A New Edition, revised. London: Macmillan and Co. 1866.

THE calm which has reigned almost unbroken in Europe for the last fifty years has passed away for ever. A short time since we were looking with anxious gaze and bated breath for the issue of those disastrous civil wars of America, which seem to have frustrated the last sibylline vaticination, and delayed for centuries the westward march of empire. We were happily and serenely unconscious of that strange counter-revolution which was ready to burst out in the Old World; and which now, by its incalculable issues, has changed, if it has not darkened, the whole prospect of Europe. In America revolution aimed at the emancipation of nations; in Europe it has crushed the independence of kingdoms. With a cruel mockery, under the sacred pretexts of unity and fatherland, mere force has imperilled the freedom of the Continent; and, if the forebodings of many be not frustrated, Sadowa will yet take rank as the most disastrous, alike to vanquisher and vanquished, among the hitherto so-called victories of the world. For more than five centuries the Turks have done good service to Europe, by enforcing caution and watchfulness among Christian nations. The Ottomans have now sunk into such abject degradation and decrepitude that politicians have allowed themselves to be betrayed into forgetfulness of the fact that the Crescent represents, not a people, but a religion. How far the changes on the Continent during the last century might have been modified or arrested had the Turkish empire been animated with its original energies it is needless to speculate; but it is remarkable-and it illustrates the permanence of historical ideas-that what we understand by the Turkish question has acquired from recent events increased prominence and interest; and this, and not the possible absorption of Denmark by Bismark, and the avatar of a Brandenburgian Empire, or the appropriation by the Czar of Norway and Sweden, remains the great political crux of the cabinets of Christendom.

The events which we have just referred to, the demolition of the Austrian Empire, and the re-organization of a mid-continental federation, have taken place with a rapidity which seems quite in keeping with an age whose glory is in steam and telegraphs and needle-guns. We are at this moment manufacturing history with super-electrical velocity. It is the more needful that we should take stock of our old historical acquirements, and review

our knowledge of the past, that we may the better appreciate history as it is born to us day by day. There is no employment more necessary to, more worthy of, man. It is one of the attributes of his nature that he is the student of those revelations of God's opposeless will to which have been vouchsafed no inspired narrator; that he is a judge of the dead, great and small; of the actions and the passions of the mighty and the low; and that he is called to witness the sure evolution of the Tragedy of the Empires.

And in this historical review no department, if we may call it a department, possesses more interest than that treated of in Mr. Bryce's masterly and modest volume; a volume whose judicial and impressive tone, and clear and far insight into the complications of the subject, vindicate the writer's claim to that great title of historian so often assumed in our day, so rarely deserved. The subject of Mr. Bryce's volume is specially in season just now, when the temporal possessions of the Bishop of Rome are so seriously enjeopardized; and the bewildered Pope, wavering between malisons and benedictions, seems to know neither the time when, nor the person whom, he ought to curse or bless.

We invite our readers to run over with us the subject of Mr. Bryce's volume. We shall endeavour, by a few introductory remarks, to place in as clear a light as we can the connexion of the subject with antecedent history. We cannot help indeed differing with Mr. Bryce on at least one point. He speaks of the empire surrendered in 1806 as the same which the crafty nephew of 'Julius had won for himself against the powers of the east, ' beneath the cliffs of Actium,' which had preserved almost unaltered through eighteen centuries of time, a title,' &c. (p. 1.) The question of identity we are aware is a very nice one; yet in this case it seems cleared of most of its debateableness. Neither in idea, name, area, or historical succession was the empire of Charlemagne one with that of Augustus. Not in idea for that of Augustus was in idea secular, uniform,' and universal; and that of Charlemagne was local, complex, and marked by an ecclesiastical character. Not in name as is evident: not in area, for that of Charlemagne was confined to Europe, and to only a part, less than the original Roman conquests in Europe: not in historical succession, for at least 324 years elapsed between the extinction of the Roman Empire of the West, and the establishment of the Holy Roman Empire. The system organized by Charlemagne was not unworthy' of the title it

2

1 Charlemagne's two-headed eagle expressed the union of the Empires of Germany and Rome.

2 Vide Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall,' chap. xlix.

assumed; but as a fact-and a fact, too, the oversight or neglect of which is sure to entail infinite puzzleheadedness-the Holy Roman Empire as much represents the great old Roman Empire as Napoleon III. represents legitimacy and the divine hereditary right of Charlemagne.

Mr. Bryce does not attempt a history of events, but he aims at exhibiting his subject as an institution created by and embodying a wonderful system of ideas.' If so we must more or less connect the institution with the previous state of things. The Roman Empire, in the second century, had grown to be the centre of the world; and in that world an unexpected unity was given to the empire by Caracalla's decree of political universalism. This curious anticipation of the supermiraculous gift of the Gospel, the equal citizenship of the poor in the Kingdom, failed, as might be expected of such a scheme, to work unity; and Diocletian, by his dividing the empire into four parts, and Constantine, by his introduction of that court ceremonial which has continued from him to us, rendered that unity more unreal, while for the time the fiction of universal sovereignty was more zealously affirmed. When Constantine adopted the Church it was already a great political force; but, though the league was formed, a perfect identification between Church and State-such as had existed between Church and State in the Jewish system, such as had existed in pagan Rome between its political constitution and its recognised religious forms-was providentially rendered impossible by the existence and permanent recognised establishment within the Church of the ministry and sacraments. Mr. Bryce's theory is, that in consequence of this obstructiveness in her own system, the Church had no course left but to become the counterpart' of the State; and that she thus, under the combined force of doctrinal theory and practical needs, shaped for herself a machinery of patriarchs, metropolitans, and bishops. This is a very curious theory, yet natural enough in a Scotchman; but certainly neither ingenious nor new. The theory, however, is not necessary to the obvious and questionless truth that the Christian idea of unity contributed to the unification of the Roman Empire. The same political system was working itself out in another direction, and after another method. Romans admitted barbarians to rank and office; and the Teutonic tribes were recognised. The religious, the social, and political system which they were admitted to share must have exercised a very remarkable control over them; for, with the exception of Attila, all Rome's conquerors were conquered by Rome, all were softened and subdued; and save Athaulf, Alaric's brother-in-law, no barbarian appears to have entertained for a moment the desire to extinguish the Roman Empire.

This influence of Rome over her enemies is traceable to two great impressions produced by Rome. The first of these was the idea of Rome's eternity, which again was the result of her universality. The second great element in this conception was the sanctity of the imperial name. 'Where the emperor is, there is Rome.' He was consecrated and worshipped. Our author observes that under the new religion the form of adoration vanished.' Yet Gibbon tells us that like the Cæsars, he (Charlemagne) was saluted or adored by the pontiff,' and Mr. Bryce's own authorities for other facts testify to this also. Perhaps nothing can more thoroughly illustrate the power of an idea than the conduct of Odoacer the Herulian. When Romulus Augustulus, the last native Cæsar of Rome, was deposed, a deputation went to Constantinople to Zeno, begging him that, as no second emperor was needed, he would bestow proper dignity on Odoacer, as his vicegerent. With this petition the emperor complied; and the Herulian, who had the power to extinguish the whole western power of Rome, was content to take the title of King Odoacer.1 Thus, in fact, things reverted to what in a great measure had been their state during the first two centuries. But the consequences were most unfriendly to the unity of the empire. For this arrangement' developed Latinism, it emancipated the popes, it gave a new character to the projects and government of the Teutonic rulers of the West.' But the first to attempt to blend the peoples and maintain the traditions of Roman wisdom in the hands of a new and vigorous race, was Theodoric the Ostrogoth, 'the forerunner of the first barbarian emperor.' Yet even he maintained his submission to the throne of Constantinople; and of the two annual consuls, one was always named by the emperor. After his death, Italy was temporarily recovered for Justinian by the arms of Belisarius, but the unity he restored perished and came to naught on the invasion of the Lombards in 568. Rome's 'two enduring witnesses, her Church and law,' survived, but they did not retrieve or stay when once begun the disintegration of the empire. As the empire fell to pieces, and the new kingdom began to dissolve-as our author admits, the power and influence of the Church, as the centre, as that which furnishes the one abiding bond to society, began to be felt more and more. So, too, was it with the Roman code. But, permanent and powerful as we regard the Roman law, we cannot do more than admit that if in the eighth century the empire still existed in men's minds as a power not destroyed,' this is an instance of the unreasonableness and tyranny of the imagina

1 Not King of Italy. The barbarian kings for centuries did not assume ter ritorial titles.