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sovereignty is subject to the civil laws,' there is nothing so mischievous in this respect as the doctrine, that 'whatsoever a man does against his conscience is sinne;' and that he owes an allegiance to the blessed and only Potentate,' which no earthly authority can contravene. The whole drift, therefore, of the third part of the Leviathan is to undermine the Scriptures. With a considerable share of biblical reading, so common at that time, he reviews the sacred Canon; the signification of the terms prophet, church, kingdom of God, heaven, hell, &c.;—while, by the most insidious suggestions, by etymologies-such as blowing into for inspiration, and by wresting various passages which inculcate obedience to civil rulers, he succeeds in throwing ridicule on divine truth, and, at the same time, in seeming to equip himself with its armour to fight the battle of Leviathan against God. In order to carry him through in triumph, he treats lastly of the Kingdom of Darknesse; overthrows the Papal power; places all education and teaching in the hands of the State; proposes his own writings as the common text-book; and, with extraordinary ingenuity, argues that, since Saul's appointment, God has had and will have no Kingdom upon Earth till Christ's Second Coming other than that which is incorporated in his Vicegerent-the seat of all civil and spiritual authority. Absolute submission to him, therefore, is the present form of our duty to God. No plea of Conscience can arise, and should it, persecution is a Virtue, since this maintains inviolable against fanaticism, that Sovereignty, which is the only known similitude of the Most High.

We have not allowed ourselves space to dwell at any greater length on the moral and theological doctrines of these volumes. As to the latter, we have little occasion to speak. In a thin folio in the British Museum, entitled, Sayings of Pious Men,' there is a single sheet, which was published by Charles Blount, called the dying legacy of Mr. Thomas Hobbes. Amidst extracts from his chief work is one short sentence, conveying Blount's notion of his theology:-'God is Almighty Matter.'

We fear, after all, that this is as much as can be said for it. His materialism breaks out everywhere. Bodies, and nothing else, in his view, composed the universe. And, though he calls the Deity a corporeal spirit, there is little reason to think that he believed in any intelligent subsistence-the God of the spirits of all flesh.' His latter days awaken no hope. We left him enjoying the charms of Chatsworth in 1653. From this time, he carried on his controversies with Wallis and Bramhall; published his Elementa Philosophie in 1655; vindicated his loyalty; had a pension of a hundred a year at the Restoration; was honoured by a parliamentary censure; received a visit in 1669 from Cosmo

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de' Medici; published his translation of Homer in 1675; and died at Hardwick, Dec. 4, 1679, in the ninety-second year of his age, wishing, when he knew he could not live, to find a hole to crawl out of this world at.' Poor old man! He lived not for himself, though he thought so, and taught others that this was the end of life. He was raised up to shock the mind of all Europe, and the beneficial action of his works is felt to the present hour. Nor would the friends of man hesitate to hail him a second time, if his existence were the condition on which Cudworths, Clarkes, Butlers, and others of a like school, were to be called from the depths of Nature's bosom to confront and defeat him. He did evil; he was the occasion of good. Here, as elsewhere, the system of the Divine Being is one; and the operations of Providence, which we thus observe, are miniature forms of the grand scheme of redemption, in which Satan is followed and subdued by the Son of Man. In style and tactics Hobbes had no equal. The works of Bramhall and Cumberland-indeed of all his antagonists are far inferior to his in free and vigorous composition. They have, however, better titles to praise; and we know of no more healthy exercise than to follow both parties step by step in the battles which they fought. His great powers have ever been acknowledged. His genius was the bond which united him to Bacon, Gassendi, and Galileo; and, though we do not think that his fame has grown with the lapse of time, yet we are satisfied that this is owing merely to the enormities of his system.

A calm strength pervades almost all his writings. He advances from one point to another without any sudden jerk or visible effort, and the process of thought goes on at its usual elevation like the unwatched pulse of a strong man. Even when the ground is rotten beneath his feet he has the power of sustaining himself by raising an unseen prop, or somewhat extending his base, without allowing the reader to think that he is employing any art to retain his position. His self-confidence was never disturbed. With unmatched presumption he affirms that he is 'the first that hath made the grounds of geometry firm and coherent.' Vol. vii. 242. Neither, however, in Mathematics nor Physics has he made for himself a name. His other writings produced great effect in his own day; they afterwards formed a school which lives, and is likely to live, but not to lead, at least not in ethics and philosophy. No writer on human nature can be profound, who makes Will and Appetite, Conscience and Consciousness, the same; and identifies Good and Evil, Right and Wrong, with the ever-changing inclinations and antipathies of mankind. This is not to see the one in the manifold, but to merge the manifold in the one.

It is not

analysis but confusion. Being such it cannot last. An evil genius of gigantic proportions may for a time spread a mist over the whole region of morals, and have power seemingly to change men into swine, but goodness is omnipotent. The ineffable name is in her; and by its incarnate virtue do these ugly and ill-favoured forms quickly vanish, and all her children recover their native lustre. Pity no longer wears the shape of self-gratification; Religion casts off the crouching attitude of a slave. And if, instead of resting at the superficial indications which point out the wealth below, we ask how these and science and truth became possible, we shall find our way, though by à posteriori guidance, out of the darkest passages of the soul into the sunshine over which time and space and sense all cast their shadow. Man is under an eclipse, and reveals himself, like the Great Parent Spirit, only by his works. But these bespeak the laws and attributes with which he is prepared for his mission upon earth. Overlooking the achievements of science-the written and embodied intellect of man-we take off our shoes from our feet, and stand on holy ground. In the pure aspirations, and the patient counsels of piety; in the sympathies that would regenerate man; in the anticipations of life hereafter; in the hopes that follow the just; in the punishment of the evil, and the discipline of the good; in the character of Christ, and in the power of his Spirit, working in the human breast;—we see a grandeur that was wrapped up in the mystery of Heaven ere it dawned on us at birth, now hastening with a more or less visible course, and with capacities more or less exalted, towards the same goal.

'Not in entire forgetfulness,
And not in utter nakedness;

But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God, who is our home.'

The general conduct of Hobbes was correct, his habits regular, and his disposition liberal. His virtues, however, were mostly prudential; of greatness he knew nothing. After assailing all that is sacred, he had the pusillanimity, at the Restoration, to profess to submit his opinions to the constituted authorities; sheltering himself beneath the miserable plea, that when he wrote he was in the irresponsible state of nature, there being, in conse quence of the subversion of government, no legitimate judge of heresy.

We have only to add, in relation to this complete collection of his works, that we should have been better pleased with the labours of Sir W. Molesworth had he indulged a little more in elucidative annotation.

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ART. VII. (1.) German Fairy Tales, and Popular Stories. Translated from the Collection of MM. GRIMM, by EDGAR TAYLOR. Joseph Cundall.

1846.

(2.) Village Tales, from the Black Forest. By BERTHOLD AUERBACH. Translated by META TAYLOR. David Bogue. 1847.

'POPULAR fictions and traditions are somewhat gone out of fashion.' But the volume of fairy tales before us, as well as the many others of its class, that have of late made their appearance, may surely be taken as an indication that this opinion of the translators is a little out of date, and might with more propriety be referred to a past period than to the present; when the more elegant guise in which our old friends present themselves, radiant in their gay bindings, and red and black title pages, would rather intimate that they are becoming very much the fashion: and not only so, but with far higher pretensions than in the days of their former popularity; when their fascinations were usually comprised within some half dozen greyish-white pages, displaying a curious combination of large and small type-the proportion varying according as a story of greater or less length had to be compressed within the same inexorable limits; and adorned with woodcuts, which, as some scribes would say, 'may be imagined. better than described.'

Nor are we among those who may be inclined to look with disfavour on this growing disposition to revive the old legendary stores of our own and other lands. However the more cultivated mind of this generation may pronounce upon them, we must not forget that they have been most real things in the world's earlier day. And if among individuals he is held in but light esteem who is incapable of sympathy with his childhood-its griefs and enjoyments-surely it would be no very amiable trait in our national character, were we to look otherwise than with interest and somewhat of fondness on these relics of our comparative infancy, notwithstanding our having outgrown, and in our more vigorous maturity put away such childish things. It has also other and better uses. To the antiquarian it opens a wide field of inquiry and speculation, as illustration after illustration is afforded him, not only of the family likeness which prevails, but of the actual relationship subsisting among the whole tribe of fictional and spiritual beings of the most distant countries, (of their identity even in some cases;) and of the common, though often unassignable origin of their popular traditions. The hobgoblin of the East figures under some freezing alias in the North; the classical legend is faintly discernible through the veil of Saxon romance; while either identity of adventures or equi

valence, (their different cast 'evidently the result of their having been moulded by the difference of national customs, modes of thought, and other peculiarities,) proclaims the hero of the story to be one and the same; a circumstance,' says Walter Scott, 'which augurs greater poverty of human invention than we should have expected! And simple as are these fictions, they have yet served to exercise and try the skill of the learned, who, peering into the remote contiguity in which they are enshrouded, have sought, and perhaps not altogether unsuccessfully, to render these apparently mere creations of the imagination intelligible to the understanding, by fixing upon them satiric, historic, or mythological interpretations. In a literary point of view collections of this nature are deeply interesting, as indicative of the early mental, and, perchance, moral characteristics of different nations. Nor must we leave out of sight their own intrinsic merits: the wit, natural humour, keen insights into, and graphic depicting of character, and, not unfrequently, the simple beauty and pathos that mark the fairy tales and quaint romances of the olden time -merits which rarely fail of an intense appreciation alike by young and old.

As to the propriety of these fictions forming any part of a child's amusement or instruction, we are well aware there are widely differing opinions; nor shall we take it upon ourselves to pronounce ex cathedra upon the matter. We must, like the Vicar of Wakefield, admit that 'much may be said on both sides.' That singular genius, Adam Clarke, in his most amusing autobiography, after giving a list of his juvenile library, which contained most of the then known stories of this class, Jack the Giant Killer, Tom Hickathrift, Arabian Nights, &c., remarks, that many of them would now be proscribed, as being calculated, especially books of enchantment and chivalry, to vitiate the taste, and give false impressions.

'But,' adds he, is it not better to have a deeply rooted belief of the existence of an eternal world,-of God, angels, and spirits, though mingled with such superstition as naturally cleaves to infant and inexperienced minds, and which maturer judgment, reflection, and experience, will easily correct, than to be brought up in a general ignorance of God and heaven, of angels, spirits, and spiritual influ ence; or in scepticism concerning the whole? There is a sort of Sadducean education now highly in vogue, that is laying the foundation of general irreligion and deism. Had I never read those books, it is probable I should never have been a reader, or a scholar of any kind: yea, I doubt much whether I should ever have been a religious man. Books of enchantment, &c., led me to believe in a spiritual world, and that if there were a devil to hurt, there was a

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