pagan, Arminian or Quaker, Familist or Tunker, were all welcome in Providence Plantations, "so long as human orders, in point of civility, were not corrupted or violated." The community as first formed by him at Providence was an attempt to show that every man might be his own ruler, and every man his own priest; though, when the impracticability of the scheme became apparent upon the increase of the Colony, he gradually introduced the principle of representative government, and surrounded individual freedom with the salutary restraints of constitutional law. As Americans, desirous of giving to the great experiment of popular institutions a fair trial in this country, we are bound to revere the memory of that man, who was foremost in establishing here those maxims of civil and ecclesiastical law, which have since been universally adopted as the foundations of our liberties.

The other biographies contained in this volume, the Life of President Dwight by Dr. William B. Sprague, and the Life of Count Pulaski by Mr. Sparks, the editor of the "Library," we are not able to notice at present. It is enough to say of them, that they are written with ability and care, presenting a succinct narrative of all that is known in the career of these two distinguished persons, and an impartial and satisfactory estimate of their characters and services.

ART. II. Histoire du Pape Grégoire VII., et de son Siècle, d'après les Monuments Originaux. Par J. VOIGT, Professeur à l'Université de Halle. Traduite de l'Allemand, par M. L'ABBÉ JAGER. Paris A. Vaton, Libraire-Éditeur. 1838. 2 Tomes. 8vo.

SURELY it is a good sign for our age, that we have such historians as Hallam, Ranke, Hurter, and Voigt, — men who can see truth and excellence out of their own peculiar range of association, their own school of truth and excellence. And surely it is a good sign for Protestantism, which has ever tended so much to worship that intolerance which is the Antichrist of her faith, that such historians. are rising among her sons; men who can see good as well

as evil in the Western Christendom of the Middle Ages, and who dare show to their contemporaries, that the spirit of wisdom and reformation was not reserved for our perfect days aone; and yet who are not Puseyites or Patristics of any school, but earnest, free-spoken Lutherans. And among these writers, there is no one who has given himself to an age more worthy of thorough and careful examination than the one selected by Voigt. It was the age of Hildebrand, of William the Norman, of the white-haired, firm-hearted, well-taught Lanfranc, of Abelard, and Bernard of Clairvaux, and the wise Mussulmans of Spain; the age of rising cities, of consolidating feudalism, of literature beginning to breathe, of democracy struggling to be born.

Since Christianity came to man, but one great element has been introduced into European life; this was the intermingling of the Northern barbarians with the civilized, Christianized, degraded Romans of the South; the marriage of the fairhaired Teuton with his half-enslaved brunette bride. And a fierce wedding it was, a dance of torches and of swords. For five hundred years, Frank crowded on Burgundian and Visigoth; farther Frank on nearer; Saxon on the farthest Frank; Slave and Hun on him; all was bloodshed, license, licentiousness, turmoil, robbery, and woe. A prayer for aid, a cry as of millions in mortal agony, rose unceasingly toward heaven. The ploughman stood idle, with hopeless, down-cast eye; the hammer of the blacksmith hung in midair, as he thought how fruitless was his labor; the merchant stole along the hedges, shrinking from the eye of the passer, and stepped into rivers cautiously, seeking a ford, lest the man at the bridge should rob him. Over all the West of Europe, the wassail-song of the baron, the mocking laugh of the bandit, the shriek of the virgin, the nasal twang of priestly insult to God, were the only sounds which rose above the chaos of inarticulate moaning and heartfelt prayer, that came from the half-cultured country and halfdeserted town. For a time, the reign of Charlemagne acted like oil upon the waters; but the day which God gave him passed by, and all was storm again; he came as a sunbeam in a dark day, as a meteor in the tempest, dazzling and wonderful, but shedding no permanent, abiding light. Into the darkness of that tempest let us cast a glance, and try to see a clear outline or two in its great depths.

It is a law of God, that a new organization shall always be preceded by the entire dissolution of what has gone before. The mineral will crystallize anew, only after it has been completely dissolved; the vegetable and the animal must be decomposed, before their elements can recombine into other forms of life. So, too, a new society can arise, only when the old one has been wholly dissolved, its atoms freed from each other, and its old arrangements broken up, so that every particle is at liberty to become part of the new living frame, according to some other law than that which governed the formation of the old social unit. The Roman world had to be ground down and dissolved by barbarian and Christian influences, before the formation of modern society became possible. Whose eyes can watch these processes, through the dust and fumes which rise from them? From Clovis to Hugh Capet, the grinding and fermenting cease not; and it is only within the eleventh century, when every baron, in his stone nest upon the hilltop, rejoices in utter independence of law and government, that we see the freed molecules of society ready to combine anew; while within the same age, in the completed feudalism of France, the rising power of the Church, the birth of the Communes, and the song of the Troubadour, are discernible the first floating filaments of the world in which we live. When the decomposing process was completed, society may be said to have ceased, while each family and individual, passing also through a modified chaos, acquired new ideas and tended to new organizations. To use the language of electrology, each atom acquired a new polarization. Chivalry, female influence, loyalty, romantic devotion, were then born within each separate household. Virtues, which had been unknown to Roman, German, or Christian, sprang into being from the commingling of all these elements.

Would we see a man of those times, of the first half of the eleventh century, — barbarian-Christian, chaotic and contradictory? Let us take the following portrait, sketched by William of Malmesbury. Old Foulques Nerra, Count of Anjou, having for many long years governed his county with glory, and, one act excepted, with honor, at length gave the active administration into the hands of his son, Geoffrey Martel, a haughty, quarrelsome young fellow, who, not content

with the substance, would have the insignia of power, and took up arms against his father to gain them. The old man, who, in leaving the battle-field and council-court, had proposed to attend mainly to the welfare of his soul, no sooner heard of his son's disloyalty than he grew young again with anger. "Once more to horse!" cried the graybeard; up, every true man of you! The world will go to ruin at this rate! The saints shudder in their tombs at such impiety! Let every father and true son aid me!" They came at his call, and, led to battle by the fiery old warrior, overthrew the usurper and made him prisoner. What shall be done with such an enemy to society? The wrinkled brow of the father lost not its frown, and the proud boy was sentenced to the most humiliating punishment. On his hands and knees, a saddle upon his back, he was forced to crawl for miles to the feet of his father, who sat, trembling with excitement, waiting his arrival. He came in sight, he reached his parent's feet; did that paternal heart melt? Springing up, while the young man was still prostrate, again and again he kicked him, as he cried, "Are you conquered? are you conquered, boy?" The proud youth answered, "Yes, by you, my father; none else can conquer me." The flush of anger in the withered cheek died away; the bloodshot eye filled; those words, full of his own soul, reached his heart; lifting his son from the ground, he threw his arms about him, bade him forget the insult he had received, restored him his command, and forgot the past.

Is this not enough? Look, then, at this same old Foulques Nerra, journeying with two sworn servants to Jerusalem. See him, half stripped, kneeling before the Holy Sepulchre ; a wooden yoke is on his neck, and, as the servants scourge him under the eyes of wondering Mussulmans, hear his piercing prayer, Receive, dear Lord, this perjured, but repentant soul! Deign, O holy Jesus, to take me to thyself!" His prayer was not granted; three times he visited the Holy Land, and died at last in Europe, engaged in war with the son he had forgiven, because he disapproved of his marriage. Let us look at that son's employments, as recorded by another Foulques, Fulk, or Fulco, his nephew.

"By and by Geoffrey had a war with William of Normandy, who afterwards took England, and was a great king. Then he had one with the French, and the people of Berry; one with

William, Count of Poictiers; one with Emery, Viscount of Thouars; one with Hoel, Count of Nantes, and the other Breton counts who held the city of Rennes; and then one with Hugh, Count of Maine, who had failed in his fidelity to him. It was because of these wars, and the magnanimity he showed in them, that he was called the Hammer' (Martel), as being one who hammered well his enemies."

6

The nephew, who leaves us the memoirs from which this extract is taken, spent the eight years next after his uncle's death, he tells us, in warfare with his brother, "with now and then a truce," trying to settle the division of the domains left them. This record of constant warfare will explain the necessity which existed for the adoption of the "Truce of God," the work of the Church; the history of which we may with propriety sketch, as it was one of the most characteristic features of the times we treat of.

In the year 994, a fearful pestilence raged in the Southwest of France. The people, horror-stricken, crowded for safety to the churches where lay the wonder-working relics of the saints; and above all, to the church of St. Martial at Limoges. Thither they flocked, though all around was disease, and death, and pollution. The flesh of the infected. fell from their bones; the air reeked with the vapors of decay; day and night, groans and cries of anguish mingled with the unceasing prayers of all the bishops of Aquitaine, who officiated before the altar. The hand of God was seen in the affliction; conscience spoke to the hardened sinners who witnessed these scenes of terror, and princes and barons bound themselves, trembling, to cease their wars and robberies, and to practise peace and justice. But soon impunity made them forget their oath; and again, on every hand, violence and evil reigned unchecked. At length, in 1033, the angel of death once more descended, and in a form more terrible than pestilence. A famine fell upon the land, which carried agony to every hearth; all animals, all roots and grass, were exhausted, and then, as in shipwrecked vessels and besieged towns, man turned on man. The last apple that was left was used to decoy some child to death, that the decoyer might feast upon it. Men became wolves; and the wolves, starving too, broke from the mountains to aid in the warfare upon human kind. Again God's hand was recognized, and when the Church raised her voice and said