you to

whose service his life had been devoted, if his soul was at last left in hell, and the Holy One was suffered, like a common man, the prey of worms and putrefaction, then truly is our preaching vain, and faith is vain. It is to no purpose your that we exhort sacrifice present interests to future hopes, to renounce the gratifications of sense for those promised enjoyments in the presence of God, to rely on his atonement for the pardon of involuntary offences, and to trust to a continual supply of the Holy Spirit proportioned to the temptations the world presents. It is to no purpose that ye submit to a life of mortification and constraint, of warfare with the world and of conflict with the sensual appetite. It is to no purpose that ye stand in jeopardy every hour, in painful apprehension of the wiles of the great deceiver, the treachery of your own unguarded hearts and the sallies of unconquered appetites. If Christ be not risen from the dead,' all promises that are made to you in his name are vain, and the contempt of the present world is folly. If Christ be not risen from the dead, the consequence must either be that he was an impostor, and that this whole doctrine was a fraud, or if the purity of his life might screen him from so foul an imputation, and the truth of his pretensions be supposed consistent with a failure of his predictions in the most important article, you would only have in him a discouraging example of how little estimation in the sight of God is the utmost height of virtue to which human nature can attain. If neither the unspotted sanctity of our Saviour's character, nor his intimate union with the first principle of life itself, could give him a deliverance from the bonds of death, what hope for us who have neither claim nor plea but what is founded on the value of the Redeemer's sufferings; no union with God but what we enjoy as the worshippers of his incarnate Son. But beloved, 'Christ is risen from the dead and be come the first fruits of them that slept.' His resurrection was the accomplishment both of the ancient prophecies and of his own prediction; a declaration on the part of God that the great atonement was accepted; an attestation to the truth of our Saviour's doctrine and of his high pretensions; a confirmation of the hopes of his followers, which renders it no less unreasonable as the case stands, to doubt of the ultimate completion of his largest promises than it would have been to hope had his promises been actually found to fail in so principal an instance.” P. 125.

We are inclined to assent to the opinion of Bishop Horsley that the body with which Christ rose was immaterial, though we know that many able divines hold a contrary opinion.. Since the resurrection of Christ is a pledge of our's, it may reasonably be inferred that a similar change was effected in his natural body to that which will hereafter take place in the bodies of his true disciples. The manner in which the Bishop draws his argument to its proper termination is distinguished for elevation of sentiment and language.

"Would

"Would you now ask why Jesus, after his resurrection was not rendered visible to all the people. Will you not rather stand aghast at the impiety of the question? Ask why God is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity? Ask why he who conversed with Abraham, as a man talketh with his friend, conversed not but in judgment with the vile inhabitants of Sodom? Ask why Moses only of all the congregation was allowed to enter into the thick darkness where God was? The appearances to the apostles after the resurrection were of the same kind with the appearances in the earliest ages of the patriarchs, and to the chosen rulers of the Jewish nation. He who to converse with Abraham veiled his glory in a traveller's disguise: he who appeared to Joshua under the walls of Jericho in the habit of a warrior, with his sword ready drawn for the attack; he who was seen by Gideon and Manoah in the human form; the same shewed himself at the sepulchre to Mary Magdalene in the form of a gardener; to the two disciples at Emmaus as a wayfaring man; to the eleven separately or altogether in various forms at various times; upon every occasion in the manner of his appearance manifesting his exaltation, and yet finding means to afford them satisfactory proofs that he was the same Jesus who had died." P. 213.

Among the remaining Discourses of this volume, we were particularly attracted by the two last, on the extraordinary and ordinary operation of the Holy Spirit. In the former of these, an idea of the Bishop will probably be deemed fanciful, that the appearance of the fiery tongues which descended on the Apostles continued visible on the head of each when he came abroad to address the multitude. The latter discourse we want words to praise in a manner equal to its excellence; we are tempted to join in the panegyric which Scaliger passed on an ode of Horace, that he would rather have been its author than king of Arragon.

From the great popularity which the Sermons of this learned prelate have experienced, we are inclined to acquiesce in an opinion advanced by him, that a discussion of difficult and ambiguous texts may be rendered interesting to the unlettered. He thought and thought justly, that these disquisitions might be such as would find their way not only into the libraries of the learned, but into the closets of the devout;

"Quod legeret tereretque viritim publicus usus."

ART.

ART. II. Charlemagne; ou l'Eglise délivrée. Poème Epique, en vingt-quatre chants. Par Lucien Bonaparte, Membre de l'Institut de France, etc. etc. 2 vols. 4to. Longman and Co.

1814.

AMONG the phenomena of these wild and turbulent times is surely to be accounted an epic poem in twenty-four cantos, which boasts for its author one of that tremendous family who have called forth at once the wonder and the execration of the age. Endowed with a genius as commanding, and a penetration still more profound than that of Napoleon himself, he had long withdrawn from the scenes of active life, and had renounced his allegiance to that imperial throne, the foundations of which he himself had laid. Not the offer of a kingdom could induce him to become the support of a tyranny which he detested, even though that tyrant was a brother. Ardent in his love of a romantic, perhaps even a ferocious liberty, Lucien was a revolutionist from principle, a character which neither the ties of private affection, nor the splendour of public power have ever tempted him to abandon. Whatever may have been his crimes, they have been consistent at least; and though enriched with plunder and stained with blood, his hands have fought for no other despot than the dæmon of jacobinism. Under this spell, his brother is now fast bound, and Lucien is his supporter and guide; but should he burst his chains, and re-establish himself in all his former power, we doubt not that Lucien will again retire to his Tusculum, or again take refuge even in this hostile island, and offer that homage to the shrine of the muses which he refused to pay before the imperial throne.

The subject of the poem is the fall of the empire of the Lombards, which was overthrown by Charlemagne on the capture of their last king Desiderius. Buthowever interesting such an epoch may be to the historian, with regard to the change which it produced on the political events of Europe, it is by no means a subject sufficiently interesting for an epic poem. Our poet in order to render it subservient to his purpose, considers it under the view of religion, and by representing Desiderius as the greatest enemy of the Church, and Charles, as the most strenuous de fender of the Pope, endeavours to establish his great moral

"Ni les portes d'enfer, ni les foibles mortels

Ne prévaudront jamais sur l'Eglise Chretienne."

Considered in this point of view, the poem of Charlemagne might doubtless have been both instructive and useful. For the moral which it inculcates, and the truth which it represents, are of

such

Like

such a nature as to interest all the Christian world. Milton, his purpose is to vindicate the ways of God to man, to shew the triumph of religion, and the power of the Most Highest. At the same time it must be confessed that the fable which conveys this moral, and the narration which developes this truth, are by no means interesting in themselves. The reader, as he proceeds, never ceases to perceive that the fidelity of the historian is sacrificed to the imagination of the poet; that events are feigned, circumstances forged, and characters misrepresented; that neither the Pope nor Desiderius, nor Charles, are by any means what the poet would represent them; that the king of the Lombards in waging war against the Roman Pontiff had no other object, but the recovery of those estates which the Pope had usurped, or at the best, which against all show of right had been wrested from the Lombards by Pepin, and conferred upon the Holy See; that Charles was led into the war neither by the love of religion nor respect to the Pontiff; that he was heaping injuries upon the very man whose daughter he had dishonoured, and whose projects he had forwarded, as Jong as it suited his ambitious views; that the Pope in calling on Charlemagne to assist him against the Lombards, had no other views but the maintenance of those claims which for so many ages caused the annals of the world to be written in blood, and cast a shadow of disgrace even upon the purity of religion. How then can we approve and admire the hero of the poem engaging in such a war? How can we agree with the poet in considering it as a triumph of the Church? How can we rejoice at the victory of Charles, at the fall of Desiderius?

It is not so that Tasso or even Voltaire have treated the subject of their poems. The truth of history has been, literally preserved both in the Henriade and in the Gerusalemme; and the very few deviations do not disgust the reader by their evident falsehood. Tasso's hero is as good as he is great; his valour, his prudence, his piety, his religion, are what every man must admire, and for which every historian must give him credit. Voltaire represents his hero also great and amiable even in his weaknesses; the truth of history is most faithfully preserved, and the very canto on the loves of Henry and Gabrielle, is perhaps that which pleases the most in the whole Henriade. In both these poems, the reader must rejoice at the success which crowns the efforts of their several heroes, and the interposition of Providence pleases him the more as it justifies his own feelings and expectations. And yet the subject of the Henriade is in itself as much, and perhaps much more unfit for an epic poem than that of Charlemagne.

The whole poem before us, in a great measure, turns upon

the

the dismission of the Lombard Princess by Charles, and the Fecall of his first wife Adelinde. But such a step, far from awaking our sympathy, excites our indignation. It is our own Henry VIII. murdering one wife, to commit adultery with another. Our poet considers Armélie as a second wife to Charles, after his divorcement of Adelinde. This indeed is Muratori's opinion. But neither Muratori, nor any other historian asserts, that Charles dismissed this second wife for the sake of resuming the first whom he had divorced. All other historians consider this Lombard Princess as the first wife of Charlemagne. The Pope Stephen III. (though Mr. Gibbon calls him Stephen IV.) had most violently opposed the marriage. He foresaw the diminution of his temporal power,and the Lombards were branded by the appellation horrida, perfidâ nec dicendû fatentissima natione Longobardorum, to whom he imputed the first origin of leprosy, and whose alliance he denounces as unlawful and cursed on the authority of the Holy Scriptures. But Bertha the mother of Charles, was not deterred by this violent denunciation of the Pope. She went in person to ask, obtain, and accompany into France the daughter of Desiderius, as a wife for her son. The marriage was celebrated with pomp; but the fickle disposition of Charles was soon tired of a beauty that had lost all charms with its novelty. After two years marriage, the Lombard Princess sine crimine ullo was remanded to her father; and new wives and concubines to the number of nine established in the family of the emperor the right of polygamy and concubinage, nor did the Roman Pontiffs dare to make any representation upon so flagrant a breach of all moral and Christian law.

Our poet to induce Charles to dismiss the Lombard Princess, employs the wild expression of the mad Orlando, and the persuasions of an old monk, but with such a character it is impossible to conceive that either the one or the other could be of any avail. Indeed if he had been left to himself he would have He pursued the same; perhaps even a more venial course. would have avoided both hypocrisy and inconsistency, but while the poet wraps him in the cloak of religion, and represents him as a real penitent, at the very time that he is plunging deeper and deeper into concubinage and polygamy; his hero exhibits the union of hypocrisy and vice, and while he gratifies the ambition, and forwards the views of the Pope, he reaches the very acmé of human depravity.

How then can we avoid being disgusted with the fifth canto, in which this monarch dismisses Armélie? How can we sympathize with the poet, who introduces us to the cloisters where the forgotten Adelinde had retired? How can we share the tender feelings of paternal affection towards Emma, when

We