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ART. V-1. The Massacre of S. Bartholomew, preceded by a History of the Religious War in the Reign of Charles IX. By HENRY WHITE. With Illustrations. London: John Murray. 1868.

2. The Huguenots: their Settlements, Churches, and Industries, in England and Ireland. By SAMUEL SMILES, Author of 'Self-Help,' &c. Second Edition. London: John Murray. 1868.

HISTORY is sometimes true to herself, interpreting events as well as recording them. It can hardly be imagined now that any literary discoveries in the years that are to be will obliterate or soften down the atrocious conduct of William the Third to his Scotch subjects, or change the verdict that has been passed upon that great crime. The historical romancist has done his best; and whether he account the King the greatest criminal, or the least guilty in the deed, it still remains the Massacre of Glencoe. The terrible events of S. Bartholomew's day in France, in 1572, have been regarded with a like rigid tenacity of judgment. Writers of different schools of thought will endeavour to extricate from all charge of complicity those whom they specially undertake to represent. You are an historian with a theory; you are a speculative politician, or a positivist in statecraft, and you would escape from all responsibility for a transaction which was a mistake as well as a crime; you are an Ultramontane, bound by every refinement of advocacy, by every fetch of logic, to defend from the charge of blood, from a charge of such treachery as only despots can devise, the Incarnate Presence and Oracle of the Holy Ghost. Whatever success, in any direction, may attend upon this literary legerdemain-and this is a point which we shall try to examine-that religious insurrection, which began in Paris on the 24th of August, 1572, will be known for ever as the Massacre of S. Bartholomew. Whatever our historical æstheticism may succeed in modifying, it can never tamper with that righteous and absolute award. We do not, however, mean to compare beyond the particulars here stated, the two events. They scarcely admit of a comparison; and in one remarkable feature they stand in direct contrast. The Massacre of Glencoe, like the Sicilian Vespers, was almost wholly an isolated event, a separate tragedy, complete in all its own horror, ended in its final act, and rounded into itself. It had, properly speaking, no political after-fruits and results,

beyond the extinction of the royal house, which was the chief agent in the crime. But in the Massacre of S. Bartholomew we have the crowning event in a great series, distinguishable from all that went before, not by its exceptional atrocity, so much as by its dramatic fulness, and that scenic skill which brought into play, so to speak, the whole force of the company. And, again, as the Massacre of S. Bartholomew cannot be separated from the antecedent religious troubles of France, neither can it be thought of save as indissolubly connected with the very greatest national and ecclesiastical after-fruits. We are gathering them every day. The great Theopolitical movement of the nineteenth century began that age of revolution through which human society is still passing; the new wine of religious thought, undiluted by the influence of authority, was poured into vessels unable to contain it. The ecclesiastical organizations, and political systems of the age, were unequal to the new and vigorous deposit the wine has been spilled and the bottles marred.

The whole of the great historical subject of the Huguenots may be said to be exhaustively disposed of in the two works whose titles are here prefixed. Mr. White does not pursue his theme beyond the death of Charles. We think he ought to have completed his work by supplying a narrative of the after-life and the death of the prime mover of all these harms, 'the Medici.' Mr. White writes in a calm and careful manner, without affecting any graces of style, or advocating any special theory. Mr. Smiles has already achieved an honourable position in the world of letters; and his present work confirms his right to the appreciation which he has received from the public. Mr. Smiles' volume contains a brief review of the effects of the massacre; and traces out the effects of that event itself and the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes upon the European nations. He has also added brief notices of the chief Huguenot families which have settled in the British empire, and an inquiry into the results flowing from that immigration on the commercial and political life of England. In this work there is also an omission which we think is to be regretted. We need a trustworthy account of the actual state of the so-called Reformed Church of France; not that, judging from scattered observations on kindred subjects, we think Mr. Smiles, or indeed Mr. White, the best qualified for this task. It must be ever an attractive subject what gains, reaped from their great trial, the Reformed communities of France can show as to increased purity of faith, and the expanding energies of the Christian life. We can contrast the Catholic Church as it is now with what it was up to 1789 or 1792, and we confess that we can derive but little encouragement from the review; the exceeding fury of the past perse

cution, the many opportunities of this time, the additional securities believed to be found in Ultramontane reliances and Parthenolatrous devotions-duly weighed and considered. Is it true that an indeterminate rationalism prevails in the assemblies which in a measure represent the old Huguenot Churches? Is it true that the so-called religious world of France is divided between Deism and Ultramontanism-or if we may so sayPio-Nonoism?

Mr. White calls attention to the circumstance that there are in fact two theories regarding the Massacre of S. Bartholomew. According to the one theory, it was a long-premeditated plot; according to the later theory, which commands the support of Ranke, Capefigue, Soldan, Baum, and Coquerel, the massacre was but an accidental explosion, the chance-result of a momentary spasm of mingled terror and fanaticism, caused by the unsuccessful attempt to murder Coligny.' We shall, perhaps, arrive at a more adequate and historical judgment if we combine these two theories. The extinction of Protestantism had long been a maxim and deliberately formed plan of every King and Government from the beginning of its appearance in the land. The moment fittest for carrying out that plan was hidden from the foresight and calculation of the conspirators. Most valuable, as throwing light on this passage of history, are the Simancas Archives in Gachard's Correspondance de Philippe II.;' the letters of Catherine; the Relazioni' of the Venetian ambassadors in the collections of Tommaseo and Buschet; and the ' Archives de la Maison d'Orange-Nassau,' with the correspondence of Aubespine, La Mothe-Fénelon, the ambassador at the English Court, and Cardinal Granvelle, the Spanish minister. The letters of the English agents in France, but lately turned to account, are very useful; but, perhaps, few things in a subject of this kind are more remarkable than that no reference to the massacre can be found in the communications to his own Government of the precise and industrious Walsingham. Mr. White is sanguine that the narrative is only missing, and will be recovered ere long. Mr. Froude, in his last volume, has made use of the report found in the Record Office from the pen of Kirkaldy of Grange. Lastly, Mr. White has not left unexamined the provincial records of France. He has pursued his investigations over fresh ground in some fourteen of the cities and towns of France.

Mr. Smiles opens his book effectively by beginning at the beginning, and introducing us to the cast-metal type of Gutenberg of Mentz. Very wonderful is it that the first book thus printed was the Bible, and that it was published complete. The clergy of the age were actually frightened from their pro

priety by the irrepressible multiplication of copies of the Scriptures. The shrewd advice of Cardinal Wolsey to the Pope, that it was of no use striving to prevent printing, but that what was incumbent on all the Church was to set up learning against learning,' was let pass unheeded. Priests and bishops alike failed to teach the people that the Mass and the Book were each in its degree indispensable to the legitimate_building up and education of the spiritual man; that the Book was needed for the development of the Christ-mind, the instruction of the regenerated intellect, while the Holy Eucharist served a more fundamental and essential office in ministering sustenance to that new nature from which spring all our thoughts of God. Unconsciously using the language of the old Puritan fanatics among ourselves, who had among them all the confusions of Babel without the diversity of tongues,' the monks declared that these enthusiasts about the Bible 'had found out a new language called Greek,' which it behoved them to beware of. Undaunted by the madness of the undertaking, the Sorbonne, in 1535, obtained for the King an ordinance for the suppression of printing. Sixty years after, 1599, Pope Pius issued his first 'Index Expurgatorius.' Mr. Smiles must mean the 'Index Prohibitorius.' The fanatic proceedings of the Sorbonne were caused by the Reforming movement in the neighbourhood of Paris. That same diocese-fifty miles north-west of the capital-where 150 years afterwards a graceless eloquence and a genius prostituted to bigotry were to utter a last loud vaunt over an extinguished schism, was the first to be moved by, and to respond to, the call for reformation. And no less a person than the Bishop himself led the movement. He was Guillaume Briçonnet, Count of Montbrun, Bishop of Meaux. His efforts to bring about a reform of life and a return to duty were crowned with great success. The Sorbonne, moved by the recusant monks and priests, got the Bishop fined; the printers who printed Bibles were seized and burnt. In Paris alone, in six months, twenty men and one woman were burnt alive. The Inquisition-thanks to the tender mercies of Clement VII.-had been in force already ten years. The Edict of Fontainebleau, issued by Francis I. in 1540, reinforced by letters patent in 1542, could not be outdone for cruelty. In 1544, by the Treaty of Crespy with Charles V., Francis bound himself to extirpate heresy; and in the following year he opened his great crusade against the Waldenses of Provence. In the towns of Mérindol and Cabrières not a soul was left alive. In the latter town, in one church, between four and five hundred women and children were found murdered. It was immediately after these dreadful crimes, during a momen

tary lull, that the sect called the Huguenots came to be known by that name. How the term is derived is still a question: from Huguon, a night-walker (they had to steal by night to their services); Eidgenossen, i.e. confederates; or Hugues, a Genevan Calvinist, with the French diminutive of added. This last is preferred by Mahn, who gives no fewer than fifteen supposed derivations. The appearance of the Huguenots as a formal body of dissenters from the national Church just preceded the death of the first of the persecutors. Like Louis XIV., the last of the Neros of the West, this other King of France died slowly of the consequences of his selfindulgent life. The little time gained for him from death by the aid of potent medicines was wasted in regrets that he had not exterminated the heretics. Francis I. looked upon the reforming doctrines as fatal to all established authority in Church and State; and yet not one sovereign who protected the new doctrine' was disturbed in his power: whereas Henry III. the devotee, and Henry IV. the convert, both perished by orthodox daggers.' On the death of Francis the plot began to thicken. And the next thirty-five years, including the reigns of Henry II. Francis II. and Charles IX., saw the fruits reaped which Francis I. had sown. The atmosphere of a Court is not favourable to the growth and stability of episcopal virtue; to believe the French prelates, the great monarch was the purest, brightest, noblest of saints. Yet he who completed the persecution was not more eulogized than the sovereign who began it.

'The King's funeral sermon was preached by Pierre du Chastel, bishop of Macon, whose orthodoxy had become suspected in consequence of the attempts he had made to save Stephen Dolet. When Cardinal de Tournon reproached him with this, the good prelate made answer, "I acted like a bishop; you like a hangman.' When the sermon was published, the Sorbonne hunted out several heretical propositions, particularly the passage where the Bishop, after extolling Francis as a saint of the highest order, continued:-"I am convinced that, after so holy a life, the King's soul, on leaving his body, was transported to heaven without passing through the flames of purgatory." The Sorbonne protested against this, and a deputation of doctors went to St. Germain, where the Court was staying, to denounce the heretical panegyrist. They were received by John de Mendoza, the first chamberlain, who desired them to be quite easy in their minds. "If you had known his Majesty as well as I did, you would have understood the meaning of the Bishop's words. The King could never stop anywhere, however agreeable the place might be; and if he went to purgatory, he only remained long enough to look about him, and was off again." — White's Massacre of S. Bartholomew, p. 21.

The successor of Francis was that prince who is remembered because he was the husband of Catherine de Medici, the niece