satisfied that the men who have recently undertaken to democratize Europe were wholly unsuited to the task, mainly because they rejected Christianity, yet we must hesitate to admit the historical necessity of monarchy, except so far as monarchy has kept the masses degraded, and by calling in the aid of the Church has added to the number of their masters and oppressors, thus wedding, in the minds of the people, Christianity with tyranny, and making the noble sentiments of liberty the enemy of Christ, who alone can make men truly free. Our author tells us that in this country the sympathies, the traditions, the history, were all in favour of republicanism, so much so that he can conceive of no other form of government for her. That is, if we understand him, republicanism is a historical necessity for America! She must continue a republic because she has a republican history, just as Europe must remain monarchical because her history is monarchical. But how would this argument have answered when our fathers were just emerging from the struggle of the revolution and were casting about for a suitable form of government? The stream of history then set in the opposite direction. And although our fathers were already qualified for self-government by intelligence and virtue, yet there was no necessity for the republic except in the deep sympathies of the people.

While Dr. Schaff, in different parts of his book, as already intimated, speaks in terms of just severity of many of his own countrymen as radical and revolutionary, and of the tendency of their opinions and acts as anarchical and highly immoral, we cannot but think he has included under his generally proper and discriminating condemnation one name which ought to have been spared, even in the presence of a Berlin audience. We mean that of Louis Kossuth. After speaking of the manner in which certain would-be European republican leaders, who have come to America within a few years past, have been compelled to settle down quietly into simple citizens, our author proceeds thus :

"The only revolutionary celebrity who has really created a great stir is Kossuth, who, during the half year of his stay in America as the nation's guest made many hundreds of English speeches, as well as a few in German, and by the power of his eloquence, in the highest degree remarkable, even in a foreign language, and by his strange gift for agitation, drew upon himself the wonder of thousands. But the history of his meteoric, rhetorical campaign through states of the Union is expressed in a few words: he went up like a rocket and came down like a stick."-P. 16.

We readily admit the failure of Kossuth, but in what sense did he fail? He certainly did not fail to excite us to the highest pitch of admiration, wonder, and reverence for his own character,

or to awaken in our hearts the deepest sympathy for his oppressed and suffering country. The very concomitants of his failure would have been a sufficient immortality for most men. But he failed to secure the coöperation of the great Western empire in the cause of Hungarian liberty; he failed to convince us that it was good policy, young as our country was, and remote from the scene of strife, to engage in a European war. He failed in England, too, where he certainly would have succeeded if the rights of man had been as dear to the government as the balance of power in Europe. But he failed in an enterprise of exalted and glorious patriotism similar to that in which Franklin succeeded at the court of France, and which brought to our shores Lafayette, the citizen of two hemispheres, with French muskets, French soldiers, and French gold. If the mission of the American commissioners was more glorious than that of the Hungarian governor, it was only because the world measures glory by no standard but that of success. The honour shown to Kossuth at the time of his visit, and which is still felt for him by Americans who are not blinded by partisanship, was a spontaneous homage to his genius, the utterance of a glowing sympathy with his noble and gallant soul, and the exhibition of a melting, though unfruitful pity for his crushed country, mingled with fierce indignation against a perjured king and his royal companions in treachery and tyranny. If Dr. Schaff had fully imbibed the spirit of Washington and the fathers of the American Revolution, he never would have abused Kossuth before an audience that hated him simply because he was a republican patriarch.

Under the head of national character and social life our author represents America as exhibiting a lively ethnographical panorama, in which we see passing before us all the nationalities of the old world. In Virginia we meet with the English gentleman of the time of Elizabeth and the later Stuarts; in Philadelphia with the Quaker of the days of George Fox and William Penn; in East Pennsylvania with the Palatine and the Suabian of the former part of the last century; in New-England with the Puritan of the time of Cromwell and Baxter; on the shore of the Hudson and in NewJersey with the genuine Hollander, and in South Carolina with the Huguenots and the French noblemen of the seventeenth century. He shows, however, that in all this variegated manifoldness a higher unity prevails, in which we clearly distinguish the features of the American national character. This American national character, whose basis is English, greatly modified by the intermixture of other nationalities, and which, we are told, needs still further modification by contact with the deep German inwardness, our author describes

as remarkable for energy, self-government, activity, power of organization, strong religious convictions, and as possessing in a high degree the qualities necessary for world-dominion. Our social life is characterized as English in its general features, and in our large cities as rapidly tending to extravagance and luxury. New-York is compared with the French rather than the English capital, and if it were not for its many religious societies and churches, and its strict observance of Sunday, it might be called a second Paris. In respect to the intellectual enjoyments of social life among us, we translate from our author the following:

"The deep and thoroughly cultivated intercourse with which we meet here in Berlin, where, to speak without flattery, one can spend each evening in the most suggestive and profitable conversation, with ladies as well as with gentlemen, on science, and art, and all the higher concerns of life, is, indeed, but seldom to be met with in America. Female training especially, is still, in general, very shallow there, calculated rather for outward show than for solid, inward improvement, and in some circles where from outward appearances we might expect something better, we sometimes hear for whole evenings nothing but the stalest and most intolerable every-day chat about the weather, the fashions, and the latest wedding projects. But on the other hand a certain average culture is more general there than in Europe, where the culture is confined to certain conditions of life. Republican institutions, as we may see in part in Switzerland, have a leveling, equalizing tendency, in regard to social diversities. If the overtopping heights of culture are less frequent in America, so on the other hand we shall be unable to find there any such deep depressions of ignorance. There almost every one strives to be a gentleman or lady, that is, to reach the English ideal of outward and inward, of intellectual and moral culture, as far as their circumstances and external position will allow. Almost every man has a certain, at least outward routine, can make a respectable appearance, reads newspapers and journals, can talk intelligently about the general affairs of his fatherland; if needful, can make a speech, and in general, can make a good practical use of his knowledge. The amount of sound sense, of prudence and practical skill, and of speaking talent to be found there among all classes is really astonishing."-P. 35.

From this flattering view of the American mind, the author proceeds to literature and science, and among other topics alludes to our public schools, mentions the Romish opposition to them, and rather sides with it, and says that certain prominent men in the Protestant confessions have assumed a polemical attitude toward them, and are labouring to establish parochial schools. It is true that many of the Protestant Churches, as also the Jews, have established schools of their own, but certainly, as far as we have any knowledge, those who have done so from hostility to the public schools must be looked for among the Puseyites or their Mercersburg friends.

We have some account also of college education in the country, and what is said is marked by fairness and discrimination. It is very properly stated that in the German sense of the word we have

no university,—that Yale, Harvard, and the University of Virginia make the nearest approach to it. The author makes a slight mistake, however, in attaching a theological department to the University of Virginia.

The newspaper press comes in for a share of attention, and the Germans are astonished to hear of the immense circulation of some of our American papers, among others, certain of the religious weeklies, one of which, the New-York Observer, they are told, reaches the enormous height of twenty thousand. We allude to this part of the book merely to show that better examples might have been selected; and we cannot imagine why they were not. The Christian Advocate, New-York, and the Western Christian Advocate, Cincinnati, have a circulation of between thirty and forty thousand each. We pass now to notice the author's remarks upon the aspects of religion and the Church. He shows, very truly, that, although we have no state Church, yet the state, as such, does not leave Christianity entirely unrecognised; that in most, if not in all of the state governments, there are stringent laws against atheism, blasphemy, desecration of the Sabbath, and polygamy; and that even Congress acknowledges Christianity by the election of a chaplain for each house, as well as by providing similar officers for the army and navy. He falls, however, into a slight error when he states that the congressional chaplains have been mostly Protestant Episcopal and Presbyterian. The Methodists have had their full share of representatives in this office, and of late years, indeed, more than any other denomination. The last Congress had a Methodist chaplain in each house. We call attention to this error, not because it is of any great importance in this country, but merely because the German hearers and readers of these lectures, whose ideas are so much influenced by official dignity, might have thought better of us if Dr. Schaff had informed them correctly at this point.

Dr. Schaff seems to have grave doubts respecting what is called the voluntary principle, namely, that condition of the Church in which, unsupported by the state, it is left to depend upon the hearts of its members; for although he makes many statements going to show how efficiently it works, yet he tells us it has its dark sides; and further, that he would by no means defend, as an ideal condition, the separation of Church and state, of which the voluntary principle is a necessary fruit, though he considers it preferable to territorialism and police guardianship of the Church, and holds it to be a present necessity.

But the great source of grief with our author in regard to the

ecclesiastical relations of our country, is found in sectarianism, (Sectenwesen.) On this point we translate as follows:

"America is the classic land of sects, which there, in perfect civil authorization, can develop themselves without opposition. This is connected with the above-mentioned preponderating reformed type of the country. For in the reformed Church, the Protestant, hence also the subjective, individualistic principle is most strongly brought out. By the term sectarianism we describe the whole ecclesiastical condition of the country. For the difference between Church and sect has no existence there, at least, in the sense of established Church and dissenting societies, as they are ordinarily understood in England and Germany. In America we have no state Church, and hence no dissentThere every religious society, if it does not outrage the common Christian feelings of the people or the public morality, (as the Mormons, who, on this account, were driven out of Ohio and Illinois,) enjoys the same protection and the same rights.”—P. 81.

ers.

Further on, in the same spirit, he adds

"There is the Romanist, with the tridentinum and the pomp of the mass; the Episcopal Anglican, with the thirty-nine articles and the book of common prayer; the Scotch Presbyterian, with the Westminster confession and his presbyteries and synods; the Congregationalist, or Puritan in the narrower sense, likewise with the Westminster confession, but with independent Churches; the Baptist, with his immersion and his rejection of infant baptism; the Quaker, with his inward light; the Methodist, with his insisting upon repentance and conversion, and his artfully-contrived machinery."

There, too, are the Lutheran, the German Reformed, the Dutch Reformed, and others, all standing side by side, in the enjoyment of the same liberty, making war upon sin, though sometimes also upon each other, and achieving triumphs of no mean character or trifling extent, since, as the author tells us, multitudes of souls are gathered every year by most of these sects, and some of them have doubled their numbers within the last ten years.

Our author admits that this confusion of sects, as he calls it, may, from a certain point of view, be regarded with favour; that a person who looks upon the conversion of men as the whole design of the Church, may well be favourably impressed with the religious condition of America. He admits that this glorious object is promoted by the great number of Churches and sects, which incite each other to increased activity and fruitfulness. He even asserts that there are in this country, in proportion to population, more truly-awakened souls and more individual effort and sacrifice for religion than any where else in the world, Scotland, perhaps, excepted; and he denies that our sectarianism works to the advantage either of infidelity or Romanism. But he tells us, notwithstanding all this, that when we come to inspect this state of things more closely, we shall find that it has " great weaknesses and dark aspects; that it sets in motion every impure motive, encourages party-spirit and party-passion,