practical tenor of his teaching lingered covertly, but persistently, from that time forth, among different classes, although more especially, indeed, among the lowest ranks of the community.

No one will deny, however, that if we consider from a Protestant point of view the reformation aimed at by Wiclif, we shall find much to object to. He was himself fully sensible of the great proportion of error and weakness that clung to his system. But it must not be forgotten, that in the age in which he lived it was a matter of the first importance to cleanse the State from the corrupt secular pretensions of the Church. Nothing but the mode of thought peculiar to his day could have led him to the illogical assertion, borrowed from the principle of feudalism, that every earthly possession, like a dispensation of mercy from heaven, can be forfeited through sin, both by the layman and the priest. We can now see that he was deficient in scientific and critical knowledge, which might have aided him in his expositions of theology and philosophy, and more especially in his translation of the Bible. But we cannot reproach him for these deficiencies, and still less that he continued to his last days to attend mass; for he did not attack this hierarchical idolatry from the same point of view that was subsequently assumed by Luther. On one occasion he expressly stated, that his worship of the Host was conditional and spiritual, for the body of Christ dwelt in heaven. He never attempted to form a new communion; and his itinerant preachers were designed only to give new vigour to the inner being of the Church, and in no way to disturb its existing external traditionary system.

Notwithstanding all his short-comings, he must be regarded as the worthy precursor of the German Reformation, however much the limited and arbitrary tendency towards one special direction has led certain writers to deny his claims to this merit. We confidently hope that the Anglican Church, and more especially the University of Oxford, will carry out the purpose that has often been expressed, of publishing the many unprinted tracts and sermons of Wiclif, and thus erect the noblest monument that could be raised to his memory, by proving that his life and actions were truly those of a messenger sent by God himself as a witness to the faith. Let us not forget the testimony borne to the memory of the great Reformer by Milton, in his forcible and eloquent speech to the Parliament of England for the liberty of unlicensed printing; when, in the fervour of his Protestant patriotism, he exclaims, with almost mournful emotion: "And had it not been the obstinate perverseness of our prelates against the divine and admirable spirit of Wiclif, to suppress him as a schismatic and innovator, perhaps neither the Bohemian Huss and Jerome, no, nor the name of Luther, or of Calvin, had been ever known; the glory of reforming all our neighbours had been completely ours."

IX.

KING HENRY V. AND KING SIGISMUND.

THERE is something very significant in the fact, that Wiclif should have arisen among a people of Germanic origin, living near the narrow margin of Celtic population which in his time was regarded as the western boundary of the world, while Huss followed him in the remote east, where the University of Prague formed the connecting link between civilization and barbarism among a nation of Slavonic origin. The vast extent of Germany, from the midst of which Luther was destined in a future age to arise, still remained apparently unmoved in the centre of these disturbing influences. It afforded, however, many links of connexion which were not appreciable at other spots. Among these we may instance the remarkable fate of the imperial dynasty of Luxemburg. This house, which from its hereditary tendencies had been drawn within the sphere of French policy, naturally continued during the greater part of the fourteenth century to be at enmity with the Plantagenets, until the relations existing between Edward III. and Italy, and more especially the divided power of the popes, first brought this prince into connexion, within the transalpine territory, with the wretched schemes of King

Wenzeslaus. To this intercourse it would appear that the marriage of the young King Richard II. with Anne of Bohemia is due, which although it did not produce a new royal race, was momentous on account of the new ideas which it was the means of diffusing, and which were destined to agitate the entire world.

It is a matter of no little importance that these relations between both reigning houses were not severed even when each had experienced the remarkable vicissitudes that mark their several fates. Richard II. was dethroned for many reasons; among the least of which we can scarcely reckon the lukewarm assistance which he gave the Church against the heterodox movements of those days; while his brother-in-law, Wenzeslaus, not only lost the German kingly crown, but saw himself at the same time totally without support in Bohemia on the breaking out of the heretical movement among the Tchechs. The English dethroned monarch was succeeded by his cousin, Henry of Lancaster, and the Bohemian sovereign by his brother Sigismund, who became the next king of Rome. Both these newly-elected monarchs perceived that it would be to their special interest to secure the deeply irritated authorities of the ancient Church as their firm allies; while both gave the weight of their kingly power towards the extinction of heresy within their dominions. It is scarcely likely, however, that Henry could have forgotten, that his father, old John of Gaunt, had once been the personal friend and patron of Wiclif, and that he had stood by him to protect him at a time of great danger. Nor is it less improbable that Sigismund should have lost all sympathy for his brother, and that he should have retained no recollection of the

opinions which his shrewd father, Charles IV., the friend of Petrarch, had entertained towards Rome; or of the good-will which he had shown towards the pious preacher and Friar of Strasburg, Johann Tauler. The force of circumstances, and an insecure tenure of the throne to which each had unexpectedly attained, served, however, in both cases, to outweigh more important considerations.

Very different were the scenes and personal relations in which the Lancastrian and Luxemburg princes were placed, and scarcely less different were the natural dispositions of the two sovereigns. Sigismund, who had sprung from a race that was half French and half German, had been carried along with the singular destinies of his house. Neither as Margrave of Brandenburg, nor as imperial vicegerent in Poland, was he able to command the means and material resources necessary for the permanent maintenance of his authority; while his easy, careless disposition had led him, notwithstanding the many estimable qualities with which he had been gifted by nature, into fierce differences with his blood relations, and plunged him irretrievably into debt. His love of pleasure, his extreme susceptibility to female attractions, and his romantic adventures, early exercised a baneful influence on his moral principles. In addition to this, when he was king of Hungary, he was in some degree, perhaps to his own advantage, suddenly thrown in the midst of a mass of popular confusion, in which Germans, Slavonians, and Magyars were constantly brought into a state of political, ecclesiastical, and social antagonism, from which they were unable to develop clear and constitutional order