ested sentiment. If a man is not courageous idle to speculate whether a truly Liberal or unselfish or magnanimous at forty, he is Minister in Count Bismark's place could not likely to be so at sixty or at seventy. have accomplished by other means what he As soon as he has destroyed all his idols of has accomplished by the unscrupulous but both sexes, his growth in these directions judicious use of force. stops short, and when he burns no more incense to any hero or heroine, his capacity for becoming a hero himself deserts him. Hero-worship, therefore, confined within reasonable limits, is the salt of life, and though it may be an inevitable law that sooner or later we find out the hollowness, not merely of our dreams, but of our idols, the approach of the inexorable hour when we shall do so is the approach, for most of us, of a period of moral stagnation, if not of moral decline. THE more brilliant and conspicuous agents in a great political revolution always get more than their proportionate share of the credit of their performances. This may even have been the case with Count Cavour, to whom no doubt, far more than to any one man except Mazzini, and intellectually far more than to Mazzini himself, Italy owes her unity. Yet had not almost all Italians been in a slight degree what Cavour was in the highest degree, had they not almost all shared his purposes, and in some degree even his powers, had there not been a diffused tenacity of purpose, subtlety of intellect, and farsightedness of patience in them, as in him, Cavour would never have achieved or even attempted his great task. And what is in some degree true of Cavour is in a very large degree true of Count Bismark. His power no doubt is great. He has estimated truly the paramount importance, in a country of too fluid intellect like Prussia, of securing a good hard kernel in a perfectly organized military system. He has known how to select his instruments well. In Count Moltke he has had the fortune to light upon a man of real genius as a General, he has played off Austria against the Legitimist prejudices of the King with consummate skill. He even managed his quarrel with the House of Deputies so as to increase his own power with his master, and gain a more complete influence in shaping his policy. All this he has done, and it is People believe in the brilliant results they see; and are not likely to believe in an equally brilliant or more brilliant Might-have-been, resulting from a quite different policy. But admitting in the highest degree the capacity which Count Bismark has shown, and the magnitude of his share in the unification of North Germany, it is yet a gross exaggeration of the intellectual credit (if we are to call it so) due to the principal actor in the recent drama to forget, as we are all forgetting, how much even of the brilliant success of the present moment is due to the able and obstinate persistency of the great Liberal majority in the Prussian Chamber of Deputies during the last few years of struggle. Count Bismark, though he has played the winning game, is perfectly aware that he can win at last only by concession of the greatest point at issue; nay, more, he is aware that it is only by the aid of the very party whom he has hitherto so strenuously snubbed and opposed that he can even now reap the harvest of success he has within his reach. Let us look only at the position of Prussia at the moment when peace with Austria was signed, and consider for a moment how much of the glory of that position is due, not to the brilliant Minister who has waged the war and extorted an indemnity even from his old adversaries at home, but to those comparatively insignificant adversaries themselves who have exercised so explicitly and with so much dignified reserve the prerogative of forgiveness, and who are obviously now to be made the most important of Count Bismark's allies and collaborateurs in what yet remains to be done. In the first place, then, it is due to the Liberals in the late assembly of Prussian Deputies, and probably to them alone, that so many in the newly annexed States demand their incorporation with the Prussian monarchy, and value so highly the promise of an immediate share in the Prussian Constitution. Had the assembly permitted itself to be worsted in the long struggle on the budget on which it has now won a final and express victory, clinched by the formal adoption of a mild but explicit censure on the Government of King William, which that Government respectfully submits to in accepting the offered indemnity, — had it, in short, been the mere passive instrument of a despotic government, it is quite certain now openly evinces his respect in accepting censure and pardon at the hands of his late adversaries, did in fact effect this much, that it made the Parliament of Prussia a political reality, attracting to itself large sympathy in all the other States of Germany; and probably the King is now heartily congratulating himself that he never took the last step of hostility towards his recusant Parliament, by openly suppressing it, and tearing up the Constitution to which he had sworn. If rumour says right that this was what Count Bismark often advised his master to do, he must feel in some respects thankful that the King was not altogether "what he would have been if the Minister had had the making of him.” Unquestionably the position of Prussia is now for all purposes infinitely stronger than it could have been had the alternative been between a North Germany ruled by a despotic military administration and the grant of a bran new constitution, in the working of which no one would have had any real that the States of North Germany, instead Nor is it only in relation to the States now annexed that the Prussian Liberals have earned much of the splendid fruits of the present crisis. In the German Parliament which is about to assemble in Hanover or Berlin, Count Bismark would have little chance of securing the favour which he will no doubt find for his policy, could he not send amongst them a well tried body of thorough Prussian Radicals, who are well known never to have deferred to his own reactionary views, and who are yet disposed, since his recent concessions, to co-operate with him in extending the area of German unity. We have only just learned, from that old letter by the present King of Prussia which has just seen the light concerning the imperial-revolutionary scheme of German unity sketched out in 1849, how mere a shadow a revolutionary Parliament would have made of the Emperor of Germany, if such a Parliament had assembled in a mood of purely Fatherland enthusiasm, and without any experience and political self-reliance of its own on the one side, or any disposition to trust its proposed Emperor on the other. Had Count Bismark been obliged to summon a German Parliament without winning first the confidence of the majority of the popular leaders in Prussia, it would have assembled in the very same mood in which it assembled in 1849, -one of double distrust, both distrust in its own power to bind the royal prerogative, and distrust in the royal person whom it proposed to bind. And, there fore, we may be sure its proposals would living of Borne, three miles from Canterhave been wild and impracticable, ineffi- bury, in the year 1600, and probably in the cient to carry the common sense of Ger- month of November. His lifetime thus many with it, and therefore also incompe- coincided very nearly with the reign of tent to aid materially him who summoned Queen Elizabeth (1556-1603), and with the it in cementing German unity. But now second great outburst of Protestantism there will be in the German Parliament a which began after the Diet of Augsburg in body of Prussian Liberals who have waged 1555, and was thrown back in the later a long war, and on the whole won it, part of the century by the efforts of the against the royal prerogative, and who are Jesuits, aided by the Roman Catholic soveryet satisfied to limit and check rather than eigns, and especially by Phillip II. Hooker's abolish that prerogative, and to use it as earlier impressions must thus have been the centre of unity and kernel of adminis- those of hope and victory. He belonged to trative strength for Germany. These men, the party of progress in the greatest crisis we may be sure, will command immense which the world had then seen for many weight. The Parliament which is to meet centuries a greater crisis in some respects will be no more debating club of wild ora- than any which has followed it. In his later tory, such as sat at Frankfort seventeen years, on the other hand, he must to some. years ago. Saxony is already fretting at extent have felt himself more or less upon the arbitrary decree which separates her the defensive, though the firmness with which fate from that of the rest of Germany. Protestantism was settled in England, and Even in Baden and Wurtemburg there are the slightness of the communication with popular meetings to demand unity with foreign countries which existed in those Prussia. On materials such as these the days in comparison with what exists at presGerman Parliament, ably led by Prussians ent, may have prevented him from perceivwho have the fullest confidence of the peo- ing the full force of the turn in the tide. ple, will work with no insignificant result, we may be sure. And thus not only for what has been already achieved, but for the extension of those achievements in the future, Germany is beholden certainly not less to the noble party of Prussian Liberals, who through ill report and good report stuck to their principles in the face of all Count Bismark's threats and temptations, than to the genius of the Minister who has found the physical means for breaking down the rotten party-walls between State and State of the great German nation. From the Saturday Review. HOOKER'S ECLESIASTICAL POLITY.* IF the value of Hooker's Ecclesiastical Polity be considered in relation to the age and the state of thought prevalent at the The Ecclesiastical Polity has, so to speak, a triple aspect. It is at once a philosophical, a theological, and a political treatise; and in order to do justice to the importance. of this, we ought to remember how vast a change had at that time come over the literature of all Europe, and especially over that of England. It was the age of the great revival of letters, and books were just beginning to be published which were constructed on the classical rather than on the scholastic model. All that we now understand by moral science-metaphysics, logic, theology, law in all its various applications-had for centuries been treated as so many branches of theology, and had been investigated, if at all, by the scholastic methods. Hooker was the first great English writer who broke through these fetters, except for exclusively controversial purposes; and although he had in other parts of Europe a few predecessors - as, for instance, Machiavel taigne, he is undoubtedly entitled to a a few contemporaries, as Bodin and Monleading place in the class of literature to ten that there were peculiarities in his situwhich he belonged. Nor must it be forgotgree of practcial importance to his writings ation as an Englishman which gave a dethat belonged to those of no other man till The Church of England, the theory of we come to Grotius, in the next generation. which he did so much to form and to enunci and time of its appearance, it will perhaps be considered one of the most remarkable books in English literature. It may, indeed, be said to have contained in itself the germ from which several characteristically English schools of thought ultimately grew. It may be convenient just to mention that Hooker was born in 1553 at Exeter, and died at his * Eight Books of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polate, was an almost unique institution. It ity. By Richard Hooker, was the most important of the Protestant The first book of Hooker is well known to every one who has anything like a competeut acquaintance with English literature. Perhaps its most remarkable quality is its extraordinary poetical power. The magnificent sentences with which it ends sum up its doctrine with such an incomparable majesty and nobility of phrase that we shall be pardoned for repeating them, familiar as they are: bodies. Its constitution had more compre-resented in the subsequent history of the hensive aims, and was constructed on more Church and State of England. The work statesmanlike principles, than that of any falls naturally into three great divisions. other church, and it was much more closely The first contains the first and second connected than any other with the active po- books, though perhaps the second book litical life of a great nation. Our own expe- might with more propriety be put in the rience has shown us in many different second division. The second contains the ways how all English speculation is affected third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh books; by the closeness of its relation to practice. and the third the eighth. These divisions This gives it on the one side great vigour may not unfairly be taken to represent the and originality, and, on the other, a fond- three aspects of which we have already ness for details, and an adaptation to imme- spoken-the philosophical, the theological, diate results, which more or less hampers and the political respectively — though the and narrows it. This peculiarity is to be seventh book is closely connected with the traced more or less in all our great writers, eighth. and we know of no one in whom it is more conspicuous than in Hooker. Sometimes we find him discoursing about the essence of law and the broadest principles of morals; and then, again, we fall upon endless discussions with Cartwright as to the pettiest of petty matters- the turn of some particular phrase, or the propriety of some small ceremony in the Prayer-Book. Of all the limitations which his character as an Englishman imposed upon him as on other English theological writers, none probably Wherefore that here we may briefly end of has detracted more from the permanent law there can be no less acknowledged than value of Hooker's writings, and from those that her seat is the bosom of God, her voice of others like him, than the necessity of the harmony of the world: all things in heaven writing controversy. and earth do her homage, the very least as Most of our great feeling her care, and the greatest as not extheological books are more or less controver-empted from her power: both angels and men sial, and though this occasionally gives them and creatures of what condition soever, though surprising spirit and precision, it certainly each in different sort and manner, yet all with impedes the flow and development of their uniform consent admiring her as the mother of authors' thoughts, and encumbers their books their peace and joy. with a great deal of matter the interest of which, such as it was, has entirely died away. Most readers of Hooker must have got very much tired of Cartwright and his errors, but it is fair to say that few, if any, controversial books are so little disfigured with the polemical spirit as the Ecclesiastical Polity. Upon the whole, it may be viewed as the first great effort made in modern times to give the full theory of a great institution, to show the ideal principles upon which it was founded, and to vindicate its substantial agreement with that ideal. The number of books even now which can claim such a character is by no means great, and in that day it stood almost alone. Taking this view in general of the character and position of the Ecclesiastical Polity, we will now attempt to give some sort of sketch of what we have called its triple aspect-its aspect, namely, towards philosophy, towards theology, and towards politics and to show how the principles which its author inculcated have been rep This, it is hardly necessary to say, is the keynote of Hooker. The Law of Nature is his name for that majestic order which he believed to reign over all things, divine and human, and to conform to which is the great object of human life : All things do work, after a sort, according to law; all other things according to a law whereof some superior unto whom they are subject of God have him both for their worker, and is the author; only the works and operations for the law whereby they are wrought. The being of God is a kind of law to his working, for that perfection which God is giveth perfection to that he doth. After much of this mystical and marvellously eloquent extolling of the ultimate principles of morals as being, so to speak, identified with the Divine existence-in which both the style and the thought often recall Bossuet-Hooker goes on to show how, in all created and imperfect beings, there is "an appetite or desire where FOURTH SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. III. 4. by they incline to something which they may be, which as yet they are not in act." They are thus moved to seek their law, or the rule of their conduct, for "that which doth assign unto each thing the kind, that which doth moderate the force and power, that which doth appoint the form and measure of working, the same we term a law." Reason enables them to do so, and therefore "the sentence that reason giveth concerning the goodness of those things that they are to do" is "the rule of voluntary agents upon earth." Its main principles are self-evident, and the rest are to be discovered by deduction from them. This natural or rational law is, according to Hooker, the very foundation of all consistent conduct, and is, as a matter of fact, universal with but few, and those insignificant, exceptions; and the highest of all the laws which reason discovers is the love of God. "Something there must be desired for itself simply, and for no other," and this must be infinite, otherwise it could not be infinitely desired. "No good is infinite but only God, therefore he is our felicity and bliss." The Scriptures are a supernatural law forming a complement to the law of nature, and resting on and guaranteed by it. true character could possibly be proved. "The authority of man, if we mark it, is the key which openeth the door of entrance into the knowledge of the Scripture." These, amplified and illustrated in various ways, are the points which form the philosophical introduction to Hooker's great work. Their connection with the rest of the book is by no means altogether clear, but we agree with Mr. Hallam in thinking that Hooker's object was to lay a foundation for his distinction between laws which are and laws which are not of perpetual obligation, and to reach the conclusion which is the fundamental principle of his whole work, that the laws of Church government are mutable and temporary. For it follows, from his view of the case, that those laws only are of perpetual obligation which can be shown to exist by self-evident principles of reason, or which are declared perpetual by express revelation contained in Scripture itself. Whatever was the connection of the first book of Hooker with the remainder of the work, its connection with the subsequent course of moral and political speculation in England was most important, and is sufficiently manifest in all the great Church of England theologians. The doctrine, thrown The second book is an argument to refute into a very few words, is, indeed, nothing the Puritanical view of the Bible as being else than that the ultimate tests of moral a cyclopædia of all knowledge and all truth, and religious truth are conscience and reaso that nothing could be affirmed to be right son. They are to be applied to all subor to be a duty which could not be express-jects, and especially to all subjects conly proved to be such out of the Bible. Few passages in the whole work are more interesting or vigorous than that in which this opinion is denounced: Admit this, and mark, I beseech you, what would follow. God, in delivering Scripture to his church, should clean have abrogated amongst them the law of nature, which is an infallible knowledge imprinted in the minds of all the children of men, whereby both general principles for directing of human actions are comprehended and conclusions derived from them; upon which conclusions groweth in particularity the choice of good and evil in the daily affairs of this life. Admit this, and what shall the Scripture be but a snare and a tor ment to weak consciences, filling them with infinite perplexities, scrupulosities, doubts insoluble, and extreme despairs. After denouncing this doctrine, Hooker goes on to describe at length the objects for which, in his opinion, the Bible was written. He views it throughout as being the natural ally of reason, resting itself for its authority on reason, whereby alone its nected with Church government, using for their instruction all other knowledge that may be available, and especially the experience of past times, but using it in the spirit not of servility to a tradition, but of free inquiry applied to a profoundly interesting branch of knowledge, and employed in solving one of the most difficult of all the problems of the art of government. Hooker preaches this doctrine with a degree of unction and enthusiasm which it seldom excites, but which in him was obviously sincere, and quite natural. The effect of this great example on the subsequent course of speculation in the Church of England has been prodigious. It has supplied the High Church school from Laud downwards with those affinities to liberalism of which it has never altogether lost the tradition, and it gave the first example of another kind of religious speculation which has been far more powerful and more widely influential. It would be difficult to say whether Laud or Chillingworth had most in common with Hooker, and both Laud and Chillingworth stand at the head of a long line of intel |