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of war. Difficult as it may be, when we see what is passing round us, to believe that the interests of mankind and the maxims of philosophy will acquire a permanent and absolute dominion over passion and ignorance, yet when we look back on the long roll of the victories already won over these enemies of our race, we do not despair of seeing the tendency to war greatly diminished, and the duration of wars greatly shortened. Indeed to this extent the maintenance of almost unbroken peace in Europe for half a century has already served, though it leaves us burdened with armaments more costly and more formidable than were ever arrayed upon a field of battle. Certain it is, as Mr. Lecky remarks, that the cause of peace has owed little to the influence of the Church, although peace 'on earth and good will to men' were the first and fairest promises of Christianity.

The period when the Catholic Church exercised a supreme ascendancy, was also the period in which Europe was most distracted by wars; and the very few instances in which the clergy exerted their gigantic influence to suppress them, are more than counterbalanced by those in which they were the direct causes of the bloodshed. Indeed, they almost consecrated war by teaching that its issue was not the result of natural agencies, but of supernatural interposition. As the special sphere of Providential action, it assumed a holy character, and success became a proof, or at least a strong presumption, of right. Hence arose that union between the sacerdotal and the military spirit which meets us in every page of history; the countless religious rites that were interwoven with military proceedings; the legends of visible miracles deciding the battle; the trial by combat, which the clergy often wished to suppress, but which nevertheless continued for centuries, because all classes regarded the issue as the judicial decision of the Deity.' (Vol. ii. p. 384.)

In that form at least war has ceased; and if it be still regarded as a stern necessity, it is no longer invoked as a religious duty. But philosophy, it must be admitted, was quite as powerless as religion to restrain men from a convulsion of armed violence, and the French Revolution, which was hailed as the dawn of universal fraternity, soon sank into a paroxysm of the military spirit, in which every right was violated and every interest crushed. The question now is whether the knowledge of the true interests of mankind has made sufficient progress to prevent a recurrence of these calamities and ensure the permanence of the blessings of peace. Mr. Cobden exclaimed the other day in a moment of despondency that although he had been preaching peace all his life, he had been grievously contradicted by the course of events; but it will at

least be acknowledged that if the danger of war still exists, it comes from a different quarter. The wars of kings and governments for the gratification of military ambition, personal resentment, or territorial cupidity are become extremely rare. The upper classes also in all nations, being the wealthiest and most enlightened, are in the main averse to war. It is entirely false to assert that a war could now be declared by this or any country for the gratification of any imaginary aristocratic interests. Aristocratic interests would, on the contrary, pay by far the largest proportion of the penalties of war, without any corresponding advantage to themselves. But unhappily the most powerful causes of war at the present day are precisely the two elements which Mr. Lecky regards with enthusiastic complacency as the last result of social progress, namely, the principle of nationalities and the infusion of a stronger proportion of democracy into civil government. On these two points we are entirely at issue with him, and we think the opinion he has formed on them is directly at variance with the whole spirit of his work. We agree rather with Mr. Merivale in his admirable volume of Historical Studies' recently published (p. 12) that these antipathies of races constitute the 'worst canker of modern polity;' and to foment them is to foment a never-ending cause of sanguinary hostility. The doctrine that because this or that province happen to speak a different language or to belong to a different race, they cannot live in freedom and concord under the same government, appears to us to be one of the most absurd and mischievous fallacies of this age. It tends to the disintegration of empires which may be united by far more important considerations than those of a dialect; and it would arrange the map of Europe anew on a fanciful principle, which cannot be carried into effect without an immense effusion of blood. In fact, if ever a general war breaks out in Europe for such an object as this, it will be the most conclusive demonstration that men are still governed by motives which excite their passions and their imaginations more than by a sense of their duty as Christians and their interests as citizens. The late invasion of Denmark by Prussia and Austria was such a war, undertaken avowedly under the uncontrollable pressure of German national excitement. Happily for the general interest of the world, other powerful States had the wisdom and forbearance to stifle the indignation excited by so great a wrong; but no event of modern times has more deeply disgraced those who took part in this aggression-second only to the partition of Poland, which originated likewise at the Court of Berlin-for

the German Powers adopted a policy of violence and injustice under the pretence of defending an oppressed nationality.

But no doubt the cause of that war, and of similar wars if they occur, is to be sought in the democratic element which has acquired so great a preponderance in Europe, far more than in the deliberate intentions of sovereigns and statesmen. The German Courts would probably have resisted if they had dared, but the national will was too strong for them. So again, in the contest raging in the United States, it is possible that statesmen, looking calmly to the ultimate welfare of the country and to the maintenance of its freedom, would have sought ere now for some rational mode of terminating the contest-indeed that was the avowed object of the defeated party at the last election; but the mass of the people of the Northern States, in the full possession of absolute and irresponsible power, reckless of the future and irritated by delay, voted for war to the bloody end; and for the present all hope of an abatement of this terrific sacrifice is postponed. These are the dangers we have to dread; and they are dangers which the spirit of nationality and the spirit of democracy have mainly created, and which no amount of philosophy, or rationalism, or political economy can effectually repress. We think, therefore, that although many of the ancient causes of war have ceased under the influence of improved political education and a more rational view of public interests, yet other causes of strife have arisen against which the present state of mankind affords no sufficient remedy.

We agree so cordially with the spirit of the greater portion of Mr. Lecky's work, and we are so impressed with the extraordinary talents he has displayed in it, that we are sorry to differ from him in these concluding observations. But they in no degree detract from our admiration of so splendid a performance. No other Irishman since Burke has devoted his talents with equal success to political philosophy. This book well deserves to be universally read and carefully studied, for if the eye is dazzled at first by the brilliancy of the form, the mind is interested and occupied by the subtlety and perspicacity of a thousand observations, which escape notice on a first perusal. In a word, we hope to see this work take its place among the best literary productions of the age, and we doubt not that it will powerfully conduce to the ultimate triumph of that cause to which it is devoted.

ART. VI.-1. Byzantine Architecture; illustrated by Examples of Edifices erected in the East during the earliest ages of Christianity. With Historical and Archæological Descriptions. By C. TEXIER and E. P. PULLAN.

London: 1864.

Folio.

2. Epigraphik von Byzantium und Constantinopolis, von den ältesten Zeiten bis zum J. 1453. Von Dr. S. A. DETHIER und Dr. A. D. MORDTMANN. 4to. Wien: 1864. 3. Acta Patriarchatus Constantinopolitani, 1305-1402, e Codice MS. Bibliotheca Palat. Vindobonensis; edentibus D.D. MIKLOVISCH et MÜLLER. 8vo. 2 vols. Vienna: 1860-2. 4. Die alt-christliche Baudenkmale Konstantinopels von V. bis XII. Jahrhundert. Auf Befehl seiner Majestät des Königs aufgenommen und historisch erläutert von W. SALZENBERG. Im Anhange des Silentiarius Paulus Beschreibung der Heiligen Sophia und der Ambon, metrisch übersetzt, und mit Anmerkungen versehen, von Dr. C. W. KORTÜM Fol. Berlin: 1854.

5. Aya Sofia, Constantinople, as recently restored by Order of H.M. the Sultan Abdul Medjid. From the original Drawings of Chevalier GASPARD FOSSATI. Lithographed by LOUIS HAGHE, Esq. Imperial Folio. London: 1854.

THE

HERE is not one among the evidences of Moslem conquest more galling to Christian associations than the occupation of Justinian's ancient basilica for the purposes of Mahometan worship. The most commonplace sight-seer from the West feels a thrill when his eye falls, for the first time, upon the flaring crescent which surmounts Sophia's cupola with golden gleam;' and this emotion deepens into a feeling of awe at the mysterious dispensations of Providence, when he has stood beneath the unaltered and still stately dome, and

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The sanctuary, the while the usurping Moslem prayed.' For Oriental Christians, this sense of bitterness is hardly second to that with which they regard the Turkish occupation of Jerusalem itself. In the latter, however they may writhe under the political supremacy of their unbelieving master, still, as the right of access to those monuments which form the peculiar object of Christian veneration is practically undisturbed, they are spared the double indignity of religious profanation superadd social wrong. But the mosque of St.

Sophia is, in Christian eyes, a standing monument at once of Moslem sacrilege and of Christian defeat, the sense of which is perpetuated and embittered by the preservation of its ancient, but now desecrated, name.

To an imaginative visitor of the modern mosque it might seem as if the structure itself were not unconscious of this wrong. The very position of the building is a kind of silent protest against the unholy use to which its Turkish masters have perverted it. Like all ancient Christian churches, it was built exactly in the line of east and west; and, as the great altar, which stood in the semicircular apse, was directly at the eastern point of the building, the worshippers in the old St. Sophia necessarily faced directly eastwards; and all the appliances of their worship were arranged with a view to that position. Now, in the exigencies of Mahometan ecclesiology, since the worshipper must turn to the Kibla at Mecca, (that is, in Constantinople, to the south-east), the mihrab, or sacred niche in the modern St. Sophia, is necessarily placed out of the centre of the apse; and thus the mimber (pulpit), the prayer-carpets, and the long ranks of worshippers themselves, present an appearance singularly at variance with every notion of architectural harmony, being arranged in lines, not parallel, but oblique, to the length of the edifice, and out of keeping with all the details of the original construction. It is as though the dead walls of this venerable pile had retained more of the spirit of their founder than the degenerate sons of the fallen Rome of the East, and had refused to bend themselves at the will of that hateful domination before which the living worshippers tamely yielded or impotently fled!

The mosque of St. Sophia had long been an object of curious interest to travellers in the East. Their interest, however, had seldom risen beyond curiosity; and it was directed rather towards St. Sophia as it is, than to the Christian events and traditions with which it is connected. For those, indeed, who know the grudging and capricious conditions under which alone a Christian visitor is admitted to a mosque, and the jealous scrutiny to which he is subjected during his visit, it will be easy to understand how rare and how precarious have been the opportunities for a complete or exact study of this, the most important of all the monuments of Byzantine art; and, notwithstanding its exceeding interest for antiquarian and artistic purposes, far more of our knowledge of its details was derived from the contemporary description of Procopius or

* De Edificiis, lib. i. c. i.

*

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