it talks of redressing a wrong, of avenging an outrage ;— thus there is progress.

Next come the wars of conquest and ambition. Alexander lays waste Asia, in order to cause his name to be pronounced in the public places at Athens. Pillage and revenge are superseded by glory. The hero only wishes for admiration; it is a great soul which goes astray; but the progress is immense, and wars for renown accelerate the civilisation of the world. These wars of ambition are perpetuated up to modern times. Then commence wars of religion a new thought makes its way to the heart of all nations. They no longer speak of the glory of man, but of the glory of God. The vain treasures of the earth give place to the treasures of eternity: they fight for the salvation of souls, to snatch their enemies from hell, and to open for them the gates of heaven! A sublime error, cast by Christianity into the midst of the barbarous crowd-the first appearance of the sentiment of the great and the infinite among the people and among armies. By it Europe becomes dematerialised. It obeys simultaneously (en masse) an idea which it believes to be moral. Piercing through the darkness which surrounds it, it advances to death in order to cause truth to triumph; and whilst men's minds are dreaming of martyrdom, St. Louis establishes this generous though incomplete principle, viz. that war among Christians is a fratricide. The astonished world hears this sentiment without believing it; but European wars are suspended, and the barbarity of the West, impressed with this new idea, directs its attacks during several ages against the barbarity of the East.

Lastly, political wars, wars of deliverance, and of liberty, succeed to religious wars. This is the period at which we are now arrived, and which will terminate in wars of defence, which will be the only ones possible from the time

that Europe, having shaken off its chains, shall have reconstituted its populations according to the precepts of the Gospel, and the principles of liberty.

But it is not sufficient to characterise war according to the prevailing passion of each age; it must also be characterised according to the men who represent these passions. Let us pass from Achilles to Alexander, from Cæsar to Bonaparte. These four men unite by the glory of arms ancient to modern times; they are each the expression of their epoch, and they verify its progress. Human sacrifices on the tomb of Patroclus. Two thousand Syrians crucified on the sea-shore in the calmness of victory. Entire populations put to the sword, or sold by auction in the public squares, like a drove of beasts. Such were the scenes presented to mankind by Achilles, Alexander, and Cæsar. Let us now follow Bonaparte from Italy to Vienna, from Berlin to Moscow. What a change amidst this glorious butchery! one laments for a friend, but one no longer kills men on his tomb; they fight, but they no longer assassinate defenceless warriors; they take a town, but they no longer sell the inhabitants for slaves. And what, then, prevented Bonaparte, when master of the world, from crowning himself with the laurels of Achilles, of Alexander, and of Cæsar? The voice of the human race.

The war which Henry IV. wished to undertake, in order to establish the universal peace of Europe, is perhaps the noblest sentiment which ever expanded the heart of a king, and it is likewise the finest page of universal history. Doubtless the great king deceived himself, but though he deceived himself, he yet deserved the gratitude of the civilised world. No one at that period could teach him, that this noble idea, in order to succeed, ought not to emanate from the king, but from the people. Peace is not

the spark which springs from the shock of arms, it is the torch which lights itself at the hearth of civilisation.

Such will be the fate of war upon the earth, and we ask but one thing, viz. that the truth of the future be estimated by the truth of the past. War is but a transitory state of populations; in proportion as we advance, its pretexts change, and its justifications become moralised. But to this road to perfectibility there is no other end than peace, since there is only peace which is human and reasonable.

To such powerful facts, the terrible law of nature will certainly be opposed; the law of reproduction by destruction; a law which condemns us to death on the very day which it calls us into life. In fact, war is in us, and around us,-all animals receive at birth arms wherewith to fight, -all arrive upon the earth as upon a battle-field, which they must moisten with their blood. And in this frightful scuffle, man appears with thunder, calling his intelligence to the assistance of his ferocity, turning against himself all the benefits of nature, and glorifying himself by the slaughter of his fellows.

Would one not say, that to kill was to fulfil the law? Yes, if man were only a wild beast, the blood of man would flow eternally: such is truly the law for wild beasts, and the law must be fulfilled. But who, then, arrests its fulfilment in man? Why do not all men rush like tigers on their prey? Whence this horror of blood, these warnings of conscience, these maledictions against the fury of conquest? Wherefore do pity and humanity exist? It is because the law of nature for man is a law of love, and not a law of destruction. Alone upon the earth, the animal is ordained to kill, and in man there is only the animal which kills. In proportion as our divine faculties become developed, the arms fall from our hands;

we begin by doubting of our right to kill our fellow-creatures, and we end by lamenting our blindness. Ah! if we were born for these massacres, God would not have placed in our bosoms conscience, which attaches only remorse to their perpetration, the moral sentiment which condemns them, and the reason which curses them. He would not have vivified the human soul with the sentiments of the sublime and the infinite, which raise it up to heaven, if he had wished an earth for the conflicts of tigers and the work of the executioner.

All the faculties which distinguish us from the brute have a horror of bloodshed, and all these faculties tend to the love of God and of men.

This is our law, the law which will one day annihilate war upon the earth. It is human, it is divine; it is derived both from heaven and earth, like the creature to whom it has been given.

APPRECIATION

CHAPTER XXXII.

OF THE LAWS OF CRETE,

SPARTA,

ATHENS, AND ROME, BY THE LAWS OF NATURE.

"Les nations Grècque et Romaine ont disparu du monde à cause de ce qu'il y avait de barbare c'est à dire d'injuste dans leurs institutions."

MADAME DE STAEL. Considérations sur la Révolution Française.

EMPIRES, like men, are born and cease to exist. Their elevation in proportion as they approach to truth, their decline in proportion as they separate themselves from it,

is an immense fact which strikes all eyes, and of which humanity will one day reap the fruits.

Hence it results that the superiority of a civilised over a barbarous people is entirely moral. Numbers and strength give way before the action of a lofty sentiment or of a virtuous thought.

Twice in the annals of the world, the love of a little corner of the globe which received the name of country has bestowed empire upon a handful of men. Had they been just, they would have preserved this empire; there is no instance of a nation's dying while in the practice of heroism and virtue.

All have succumbed beneath the weight of superstitions, of ambitions, of corruption, of ignorance, and of inhumanity. All have died from having forgotten the dignity of man, and violated the laws of nature.

It would be an act of high justice to place Sparta, Athens, and Rome, the constant objects of our admiration in youth, in the presence of the laws of nature, and to judge them by these laws.

With what surprise should we not see the greatest geniuses of antiquity mutilate man, in order to make him bend to their conceptions; make him great, as God has made animals free and powerful, by limiting them to a single instinct; and seek in an isolated law of nature (the love of country) the spring of a moral superiority which was able to regenerate a people, and to govern the rest of the world to whom this law remained unknown; for in this law was concentrated the true spirit of the legislators of Greece. Man appeared to them a being too active and too great; and not being able to imagine a means of entirely subjecting him, they divided him and made him incomplete. They cut off one half, and said to the other half,