unless he were a man of gigantic genius and not time to follow, further, Rogers's defence fame, would not be sunk under such a process, of Luther; suffice it to say, that he does full and run to utter seed? The fact that Luther justice to Luther's honesty of purpose, his did publish so much, and did nevertheless re-deep religious convictions, and his general tain his reputation, proves that although much wisdom and prudence of conduct. His errors which he wrote must have been unworthy of were all of the blood and bodily temperament, his genius; yet, as a whole, his writings were and none of the spirit. Cajetan called him "a characteristic of his powers, and contributed to beast with deep-set eyes, and wonderful specuthe working out of his purpose. They were ad- lations in his head." If so, he was a noble dressed, Mr. Rogers justly says, chiefly to the savage - a king of beasts, and his roar roused people, and many of his strangest and strong- Europe from its lethargy, dissolved the dark est expressions were uttered on plan. His spell of spiritual slavery, and gave even to motto, like Danton's, was, "to dare-and to them all the vitality it has since exhibited. dare, and to dare." He felt that a timid re- He resembled no class of men more than some former, like a timid revolutionist, is lost; and of the ancient prophets of Israel. He was no that a lofty tone, whether in bad or good taste, Christian father of the first centuries, sitting was essential to the success of his cause. cobwebbed among books- - no evangelist even Even as they are, his writings contain much of the days of the apostles, going forth meek "lion's marrow," stern truth, expressed in and sandalled, with an olive-branch in his easy, home-spun language, savage invective, hand; he reminds us rather, in all but ausrichly deserved, and much of that noble scorn terity and abstinence, of the terrible Tishbite with which a brave honest man is ever fond conflicting with Baal's prophets on Carmel, of blowing away, as through snorting nostrils, and fighting, with fire, the cause of that God those sophistries, evasions, and meannesses in who answereth by fire from heaven. But, uncontroversy which are beneath argument, baf-like him, Luther came eating and drinking, fle logical exposure, and which can only be marrying and giving in marriage, and has been reached by contempt. Add to all this, the reproached accordingly. traditionary reputation of his eloquence, and Mr. Rogers's next paper is on Leibnitz, whom those burning coals from that great conflagra- he justly ranks with the most wonderful men tion which have come down to us uncooled. of any age; and who, in that variety of faculty, For our parts, we had rather possess the re- that plethora of power, that all-sidedness nown of uttering some of these than have writ-which distinguished him, resembled a monster ten all Chillingworth's and Barrow's contro- rather than a man. A sleepless soul, who versial works. Think of that sentence which often, for weeks together, contented himself he pronounced over the bull as he burned it, surely one of the most sublime and terrible that ever came from human lips :- "As thou hast troubled and put to shame the Holy One of the Lord, so be thou troubled and consumed in eternal fires of hell;" or that at Worms "Here I stand; I cannot do otherwise: God help me." Such sentences soar above all the reaches of rhetoric, of oratory, even of poetry, and rank in grandeur with the great naked abstractions of eternal truth. They thrill not the taste, nor the passions, nor the fancy, but the soul itself. And yet they were common on the lips of Luther, the lion-hearted—the

solitary monk that shook the world.

with a few hours' slumber in his arm-chair,
without ever discomposing his couch! A
lonely spirit-with no tender family ties
but entirely devoted to inquiry and investiga
tion, as though he had been but one vast sepa-
rated eye, forever prying into the universe!
A wide eclectic catholic mind, intermeddling
with all knowledge, and seeking, if possible, to
bind mathematics, metaphysics, poetry, philol-
ogy, all arts and sciences, into the unity of a
coronet around his own brow! A soul of pro-
digious power, as well as of ideal width; "the
inventor of a new and potent calculus
father of geology—the originator of a new
form of history, which others have since been
seeking to fill up; and the author of a heroic,
if not successful, effort to grapple with the
question of questions-the problem of all ages

the

Mr. Rogers, besides, culls several passages from his familiar epistles, which attain to lofty "Whence evil, and why permitted in God's eloquence, and verge on the finest prose po- world?" A genius for whom earth seemed etry. His occasional grossness, truculence, and too narrow a sphere, and three-score and ten personality, are undeniable; but they were years too short a period, so much had he done partly the faults of his age, and sprung partly ere death, and so much did there seem refrom the vehemence of his temperament and maining for him to do; in truth, worthy of an the uncertainty of his position. He was, dur- antediluvian life, and in many of his thoughts ing a large section of his life, at bay; and if he before all ages! A mind swarming, more than had not employed every weapon in his power, even that of Coleridge, with seed-thoughts, his teeth, his horns, and his hoofs, to defend the germs of entire encyclopædias in the future; himself, he had inevitably perished. We have and, if destitute of his magical power of poetic

communication, possessed more originality, and whose contest with one another in their courses more practical energy. A man who read forms such a painful, yet instructive, incident everything and forgot nothing a living dic- in the history of science. Newton was more tionary of all the knowledge which had been the man of patient plodding industry; Leibaccumulated by man — and a living prophecy nitz the man of restless genius. Newton's deof all that was yet to be acquired - a univer-votion was limited to science and theology; sal preface to a universal volume - -"a gigantic Leibnitz pushed his impetuous way into every genius born to grapple with whole libraries." department of science, philosophy, and theoSuch is Leibnitz known by all scholars to logy; and left traces of his power even in have been. His two positive achievements, those regions he was not able fully to subdue. however, the two pillars on which he leans his Newton studied principally the laws of matter; Sampson-like strength, are the differential Leibnitz was ambitious to know these chiefly "Calculus" and the "Theodicée.' Mr. Ro- that he might reconcile, if not identify them gers's remarks on both these are extremely with the laws of mind. Newton was a theogood. In the vexed question as to the origi- rist-but the most practicalo theorists. Leibnation of the Calculus, between Leibnitz and nitz was the most theoretical of practical Newton, he seems perfectly impartial; and thinkers. Newton was the least empirical of while eagerly maintaining Newton's original- all philosophers; Leibnitz one of the most so. ity, he defends Leibnitz with no less strength, Newton shunned all speculation and conjecfrom the charge of surreptitious plagiarism ture which were not forced upon him; Leibfrom Newton. Both were too rich to require nitz revelled in these at all times and on all to steal from one another. In "Theodicée" subjects. Newton was rather timid than otherLeibnitz undertook the most daring task ever wise; he groped his way like a blind Atlas undertaken by thinker, that of explaining the while stepping from world to world; Leibnitz origin of evil by demonstrating its necessity. saw it as he sailed along in supreme dominion That he failed in this, Voltaire has proved, on the wings of his intellectual imagination. after his manner in "Candide," the wittiest Newton was a deeply humble-Leibnitz a and wickedest of his works, and Rogers, in a dauntless and daring thinker. Newton did his very different spirit and style, has demon- full measure of work, and suggested little strated here. Indeed, the inevitable eye of more that he was likely to do; Leibnitz, to common sense secs at a glance that a notion the very close of his life, teemed with proof this earth being the best of all possible mise; the one was a finished, the other a worlds is absurd and blasphemous. This sys- fragmentary production of larger size. The tem of things falls far below man's ideal, and one was a rounded planet with its cornerhow can it come up to God's? The shadows stones all complete, and its mechanisms all resting upon its past and present aspect are moving smoothly and harmoniously forward; so deep, numerous, and terrible, that nothing hitherto but-1st, simple, child-like faith; but 2ndly the prospect of a better time at hand; and 3dly, the discoveries of Jesus Christ, can convince us that they do not spring either from malignity of intention or weakness of power. The time has not yet come for a true solution of this "To assert Eternal Providence, surpassing problem; which, moreover, though it And justify the ways of God to man." were given, would not probably find the world ripe for receiving it. We are inclined, in oppo- To Pascal, Mr. Rogers proceeds with a pesition to Mr. Rogers, to suppose that it shall culiar intensity of fellow-feeling. He has yet be solved; but to look for its solution in a himself, sometimes, been compared to Pascal, very different direction from the ground taken, both in the mirthful and the pensive attributes whether by Leibnitz, by Bailey of "Festus," of his genius. Certainly, his sympathies with or by the hundred other speculators upon the him are more thorough and brotherly than mysterious theme. Meanwhile, we may, we with any other of his poetico-metaphysico-thethink, rest firmly upon these convictions-osophical heroes. He that loves most, it has first, that evil exists is a reality, not a nega- often been said, understands best. And this tion or a sham; secondly, that it is not God's; paper of Rogers sounds the very soul of Pasand that, thirdly, it shall yet cease, on earth, at cal. Indeed that presents fewer difficulties least to be man's. All attempts to go further than you might at first suppose. Pascal, with than this have failed; and failed, we think, from his almost superhuman genius, was the least a desire to find a harmony and a unity where no subtle, and most transparent of men. In wissuch things are possible or conceivable. dom almost an angel, he was in simplicity a One is tempted to draw a kind of Plutarch- child. His single-mindedness was only infeian parallel between Leibnitz and Newton-rior to, nay, seemed a part of his sublimity. so illustrious in their respective spheres-and He was from the beginning, and continued to

the other, a star in its nebulous mist, and with all its vast possibilities before it. Newton was awe-struck, by the great and dreadful sea of suns in which he swam, into a mute worshipper of the Maker; Leibnitz sought rather to be his eloquent advocate

the end, an inspired infant. A certain dash divine, and that she is his mother, even before of charlatanry distinguishes Leibnitz, as it he has heard or understood her message. He does all those monsters of power. The very loves and believes her before he knows that fact that they can do so much tempts them to she is worthy of all credence and all love. pretend to do and to be what they cannot, And, when, afterwards, he learns in some meaand are not. Possessed of vast knowledge, sure to understand her fair foreign speech, he they affect the airs of omniscience. Thus perceives her still more certainly to be a mesLeibnitz, in the universal language he sought senger from heaven. She does not, indeed, reto construct in his "swift-going carriages," in move all his perplexities; she allows the deep his "Pre-established Harmony," and in his shadows to rest still on the edge of the hori "Monads," seems seeking to stand behind the zon, and the precipices to yawn on in the disAlmighty, to overlook, direct or anticipate tance; but she creates a little space of intense him at his work. Pascal was not a monster, clearness around her child, and she bridges he was a man-nay, a child; although a man the far off gloom with the rainbow of hope. of profoundest sagacity, and a child of tran- She does not completely satisfy, but she scendent genius. Children feel far more than soothes his mind, saying to him as he kneels men the mysteries of being, although the before her, and as she blesses her noble son, gaiety and light-heartedness of their period of "Remain on him, ye rainbowed clouds, ye life prevent the feeling from oppressing their gilded doubts, by your pressure purify him souls. Who can answer the questions or re- still more, and prepare him for higher work, solve the doubts of infancy? We remember deeper thought, and clearer revelation: teach a dear child, who was taken away to Abra- him the littleness of man and the greatness of ham's bosom at nine years of age, saying that God, the insignificance of man's life on earth her two grand difficulties were, "Who made and the grandeur of his future destiny, and God, and how did sin come into the world?" impress him with this word of the Book above These, an uncaused cause, and an originated all its words, "That which I do thou knowest evil, are the great difficulties of all thinking not now, but thou shalt hereafter know, if thou men, on whom they press more or less hardly wilt humble thyself and become as a little in proportion to their calibre and tempera- child." Thus we express in parable_the ment. Pascal, adding to immense genius a healthier portion of Pascal's history. That child-like tenderness of heart and purity of latterly the clouds returned after the rain, that conduct, was peculiarly liable to the tremen- the wide rainbow faded into a dim segment, and dous doubts and fears forced on us all by the that his mother's face shone on him through a phenomena of man and the universe. He felt haze of uncertainty and tears, seems certain; them, at once, with all the freshness of infancy but this we are disposed to account for greatly and with all the force of a melancholy man- from physical causes. By studying too hard hood. He had in vain tried to solve them. and neglecting his bodily constitution he beHe had asked these dreadful questions at all came morbid to a degree, which amounted, we sciences and philosophies, and got no reply. think, to semi-mania. In this sad state the He had carried them up to heights of specu- more melancholy, because attended by the lation, where angels bashful look, and down full possession of his intellectual powers, his into the depths of reflection such as few minds most dismal doubts came back at times, his but his own have ever sounded, and all was most cherished convictions shook as with palsy, dumb. Height and depth had said, “Not in the craving originally created by his mathemaus." The universe of stars was cold, dead, tical studies for demonstrative evidence on all and tongueless. He felt terrified at, not in- subjects, became diseasedly strong, and nothstructed by it. He said, "The eternal silence ing but piety and prayer saved him from of these infinite spaces affrights me." He had shoreless and bottomless scepticism. Indeed turned for a solution from the mysterious ma- his great unfinished work on the evidences of terialism of the heavenly bodies to man, and Christianity, seems to have been intended to had found in him his doubts driven to contra- convince himself quite as much as to convince diction and despair; he seemed a puzzle so others. But he has long ago passed out of perplexed, a chaos so disorderly. He was this mysterious world; and now, we trust, sees thus rapidly approaching the gulf of scepti-"light in God's light clearly." If his doubts cism, and was about to drop in like a child over were of an order so large and deep, that they a precipice, when hark! he heard a voice be- did not "go out even to prayer and fasting," hind him; and turning round, saw Christian- he was honest in them; they did not spring ity like a mother following her son to seek and either from selfishness of life or pride of intelto save him from the catastrophe. Her beauty, lect; and along with some of the child's doubts, her mildness of deportment, her strange, yet the child's heart remained in him to the regal aspect, and the gentleness of those ac- last.

cents of an unknown land, which drop like His "Thoughts"-what can be said adehoney from her lips, convince him that she is quately of those magnificent fragments? They

mous mass of uninspired and uninstructive mat-
ter amid which he lived. He did not believe in
law, life, or blind mechanism as the all-in-all
of the system of things. He believed rather
in Tennyson's second voice-

"A little whisper breathing low,
I may not speak of what I know."

He felt, without being able to prove, that God
was in this place.

are rather subjects for thoughts than for words. They remind us of aerolites, the floating fractions of a glorious world. Some of them, to use an expression applied to Johnson's sayings," have been rolled and polished in his great mind like pebbles in the ocean. He has wrought them, and finished them as carefully as if each thought were a book. Others of them are slighter in thinking, and more careless in style. But as a whole, the collection forms one of the profoundest and most Pascal's result of thought was very much living of works. The "Thoughts" are seedpearl, and on some of them volumes might be, the same as John Foster's, although the proand have been, written. We specially admire cess by which he reached it was different. those which reflect the steadfast but gentle Pascal had turned-so to speak-the tub of gloom of the author's habit of mind, the long matter upside down and found it empty. Fos tender twilight, not without its stars and ter had simply touched its sides and heard the gleams of coming day, which shadowed his ring which proclaimed that there was nothing genius, and softened always his grandeur into within. The one reached at once and by inpathos. He is very far from being a splenetic tuition what was to the other the terminus of or misanthropic spirit. Nothing personal is a thousand lengthened intellectual researches, ever allowed either to shade or to brighten Both had lost all hope in scientific discoveries the tissue of his meditations. He stands a and metaphysical speculations, as likely to passionless spirit, as though he were disem- bring us a step nearer to the Father of Spirits, bodied, and had forgot his own name and iden- and were cast, therefore, as the orphans of tity, on the shore which divides the world of Nature, upon the mercies and blessed disman from the immensity of God, and he coveries of the Divine Word. Both, howpauses and ponders, wonders and worships ever, felt that THAT too has only very par there. He sees the vanity and weakness of tially revealed Truth, that the Bible itself is a all attempts which have hitherto been made" glass in which we see darkly," and that the to explain the difficulties and reconcile the key of the Mysteries of Man and the Unicontradictions of our present system. Yet verse is in the keeping of Death. Both, parwithout any evidence for all quasi-evidence ticularly Foster, expected too much, as it ap melts in a moment before his searching eye pears to us, from the instant transition of the into nothing-he believes it to be a whole, soul from this to another world. Both clothed and connected with one infinite mind; and their gloomy thoughts, thoughts "charged with this springs in him, not as Cousin pretends, a thunder" which was never fully evolved in from a determination, blindly to believe, but the highest eloquence which pensive thought from a whisper in his own soul, which tells can produce when wedded to poetry. But him warmly to love. He believes the uni- while Pascal's eloquence is of a grave, severe, verse to be from God, because his soul, which monumental cast, Foster's is expressed in he knows is from God, loves, although without richer imagery, and is edged by a border of understanding it. But it is not after all the fiercer sarcasm; for although the author of the matter in the universe which he regards with "Thoughts" was the author of the "Provinaffection, it is the God who is passing through cial Letters," and had wit and sarcasm at will, it, and lending it the glory of his presence. they are generally free from bitterness, and Mere matter he tramples on and despises. It are rarely allowed to intermingle with his se is just so much brute light and heat. He does rious meditations. (In these remarks we refer not, and cannot believe that the throne of to Foster's posthumous journal rather than to God and of the Lamb is made of the same his essays.) Both felt that Christianity was materials only a little sublimated, as yonder yet in bud, and looked forward with fond yet dunghill or the crest of yonder serpent. He trembling anticipation to the coming of a is an intense spiritualist. He cries out to this "new and most mighty dispensation," when it proud process of developing matter, this won- shall, under a warmer and nearer sun, expand drous Something sweltering out suns in its into a tree, the leaves of which shall be for progress. "Thou mayst do thy pleasure on the healing of the nations, and the shade of me, thou mayst crush me, but I will know that which shall be heaven begun on earth. We thou art crushing me, whilst thou shalt crush must say that we look on the religion of such blindly. I should be conscious of the defeat. men, clinging each to his plank amid the welThou shouldst not be conscious of the victory." tering wilderness of waves, and looking up Bold certainly, was the challenge of this little for the coming of the day-a religion so deeppiece of inspired humanity, this frail, slender, rooted, so sad, as regards the past and present, invalid, but divinely gifted man, to the enor-so sanguine in reference to the future, so

doubtful of man and human means, so firm in though the Jesuits individually were for the its trust on divine power and promise, with most part contemptible, their system was a far more interest and sympathy than on that very formidable one, and required the whole commonplace, bustling, Christianity which strength of a master hand to expose it. abounds with its stereotyped arguments, its We close this short notice of Pascal with eherished bigotry and narrowness, its shallow rather melancholy emotions. A man so gifted and silly gladness, its Goody Twoshoes bene- in the prodigality of heaven, and so short volence, its belief in well-oiled machineries, lived (just thirty-nine at his death), a man so Exeter Hall cheers, the power of money, and pure and good, and in the end of his days so the voice of multitudes. True religion im- miserable! A sun so bright, and that set plies struggle, doubt, sorrow, and these are amid such heavy clouds! A genius so strong indeed the main constituents of its grandeur. and so well-furnished, and yet the slave in It is just the sigh of a true and holy heart for many things of a despicable superstition! Ono a better and brighter sphere. In the case of qualified above his fellows to have extended Pascal and Foster this sigh becomes audible the boundaries of human thought, and to have to the whole earth, and is re-echoed through led the world on in wisdom and goodness, all future ages. and yet who did so little, and died believing It was during the brief sunshine hour of his that nothing was worth being done! One of life that Pascal wrote his "Provincial Let- the greatest scholars and finest writers in the ters." On these Rogers dilates with much world, and yet despising fame, and at last liveliness and power. He can meet his author loathing all literature except the Lamb's Book at all points, and is equally at home when of Life! Able to pass from the Dan to the taking a brisk morning walk with him along a Beersheba of universal knowledge, and forced breezy summit, the echoes repeating shouts of to exclaim at the end of the journey," All is joyous laughter; and when pacing at mid- barren!" Was he in this mad or wisenight the shades of a gloomy forest discolored right or wrong? We think the truth lies beby a waning moon, which seems listening to tween. He was right and wise in thinking catch their whispers as they talk of death, that man can do little at the most, know little ovil, and eternity. The "Provincial Letters" at the clearest, and must be imperfect at the are, on the whole, the most brilliant collection best; but he was wrong and mad in not atof controversial letters extant. They have tempting to know, to do, and to be the little not the rounded finish, the concentration, the within his own power, as well as in not urgred hot touches of sarcasm and the brief and ing his fellow men to know, be, and do the occasional bursts of invective darkening into less within theirs. Like the waggoner in fable, sublimity which distinguish the letters of Ju- and Foster in reality, while calling on Hernius. Nor have they the profound asides of cules to come down from the cloud, he ne reflection, or the impatient power of passion, glected to set his shoulder to the wheel. He or the masses of poetical imagery to be found should have done both, and thus if he had not in Burke's "Letter to a Noble Lord," and expedited the grand purpose of progress so "Letters on a Regicide Peace," but they ex-much as he wished, he would at least have cel these and all epistolary writings in dex-delivered his own soul, secured a deeper peace terity of argument, in power of irony, in light, in his heart, and in working more would have hurrying, scorching satire, a "fire running suffered less. While Prometheus was chained along the ground," in grace of motion and in to his rock, Pascal voluntarily chained himAttic salt and Attic elegance of style. He self to his by the chain of an iron-spiked gir has held up his enemies to immortal scorn, dle, and there mused sublime musings and and painted them in the most contemptible uttered melodious groans till merciful Death and ludicrous attitudes on a Grecian urn. released him. He was one of the very few He has preserved those wasps and flies in the Frenchmen who have combined imagination richest amber. Has he not honored too much and reverence with fancy, intellect, and wit. those wretched sophisters by destroying them In his next paper, Mr. Rogers approaches with the golden shafts of Apollo? Had not another noble and congenial theme-Plato the broad hoof of Pan or the club of Hercules and his master, Socrates. It is a Greek meetbeen a more appropriate weapon for crushing ing a Greek, and the tug of war, of course, and mangling them into mire? But had he comes a generous competition of kindred employed coarser weapons, although equally genius. We have read scores of critiques effective in destroying his enemies, he had by Landor, by Shelley, by Bulwer, by Sir gained less glory for himself. As it is, he has Daniel Sandford, by Emerson, and others, on founded one of his best claims to immortality these redoubted heroes of the Grecian philoupon the slaughter of these despicabilities, like sophy; but we forget if any of them excel the knights of old who won their laurels in this of our author in clearness of statement, clearing the forests from wild swine and simi- discrimination, sympathy with the period, and lar brutes. And, be it remembered, that appreciation of the merits of the two magnifi