rising strength of the Humanists, they about this time sought a new quarrel. They felt themselves strong enough-this was only one generation before half the west of Europe was lost to the Catholic Church-to make a persecuting crusade against the Jews. It was not against their bodies indeed, but this time only against their books. The Dominicans of the University of Cologne felt their repose disturbed by the existence of certain Hebrew books which were not composed in a Christian spirit. The books indeed were in Hebrew, and no one but the Jews and Reuchlin could read them. But no matter; there was no saying; they might be dangerous. Anyhow they were wicked, and it was a scandal they should be suffered to exist. They applied to the Imperial court for a mandate. Reuchlin, the only Oriental scholar among the lawyers, was requested to give a written opinion on these books. He handed in an opinion, the strictly professional language of which exposed the ignorance and fanaticism of the Cologne professors much more keenly than any direct satire could have done. It grew into a controversy between Reuchlin and the University of Cologne ; and Reuchlin being the head of the Humanist party, while Cologne was the head-quarters of the party of ignorance, it is not to be wondered at that the growing jealousy between Humanist and Scholastic became gradually absorbed into the episode of the Jewish books; while, on the other hand, the Jewish books were lost sight of in the new direction given to the passions of the old academical party. They now turned like baulked hounds upon Reuchlin, and swore his destruction. That venerable scholar and jurist, who had spent a long life in the pursuit of the best learning of his day, 'found himself in the decline of life the victim of a formidable persecution, which threatened ruin to himself and proscription to his favourite studies.' Adversaries of the stamp of the Cologne doctors do not long conduct a controversy by argument. They had much more effieacious weapons at command. They handed over one of Reuchlin's pamphlets to a censor, to be searched

for heresy. The censor, a theological professor of Cologne, had no difficulty in finding forty-three suspicious propositions in the pamphlet. Protestantism, be it observed, was not thought of-we are in the year 1510-Reuchlin had no idea of questioning an iota of Catholic doctrine or tradition. Reuchlin was called upon to retract, and in default was cited to appear before the Court of Inquisition at Mentz. The Prior of the Dominican con vent at Cologne, Jacob Hochstraten, though not inquisitor for the district, intended to sit in judgment on his enemy.

A less well-connected or highlyplaced man than Reuchlin would have succumbed when all the weight of the Church, the Dominicans, the Inquisition, and the University, was brought against him. Fortunately he had powerful protectors. After various decisions in, and appeals from, the provincial courts, both parties, in the_year 1514, appealed to Rome. To Rome Hochstraten went in person, not without good store of gold pieces, and backed by all the influence of the Dominican confraternity in Christendom. The friars procured condemnatory decrees from the Sorbonne, and from the theological Faculties of several of the German Universities. Confident in their strength, they ventured to talk, in case of an adverse decision, of an appeal to a general council. Reuchlin, though poor in person, had his patrons and backers. He handed in a memorial to the Papal Court, testifying to his edifying life and doctrine, signed by the Emperor, divers Electors, Princes, Bishops, Abbots, and fifty-three Swabian municipal towns. No one, on either side, thought for a moment of decision on the merits, or according to law. For where the charge was heresy, or suspicion of heresy, what 'merits' were there? It was universally felt to be a party struggle, and that the Court of Appeal would decide according as its ear was obtained, or its fears worked upon, by either of the parties. And these parties were, not Reuchlin and Hochstraten, but the whole German people divided into two hostile camps; the intelligent and aspiring

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minds on the one side, on the other the ignorant, the bigoted, and the haters of education, installed in Church dignities. The excitement was universal throughout Germany. The decision of the court was expected with feverish anxiety. Every one seemed to have a presentiment that whichever way the decision might be, matters would not rest there.

The decision was long waited for. The policy of delay is an old but never worn-out device. While the cause was thus pending, an appeal was made by Reuchlin's friends, through the press, to the public, if such an expression may be allowed of Germany in 1514.They published a collection of private letters of celebrated men, addressed to Reuchlin, partly on the affair of the Cologne prosecution, partly on other topics. It was an indirect way of showing by what a powerful phalanx of estimable men Reuchlin was befriended. The collection contained the names of all who were known for talent or learning in the Empire. The Illustrium Virorum Epistola ad Io. Reuchlinum appeared in 1514. Within less than two years after them, and while the Reuchlin Appeal was still pending at Rome, came out in Germany a volume bearing the title Epistolæ Obscurorum Virorum ad Ven. Virum Magistrum Ortuinum Gratium. It is a parody of the letters to Reuchlin. The addressee, Ortwin de Graes, was a real person, a Westphalian by birth, and at this time Professor in the Faculty of Arts at Cologne. He had taken a conspicuous, though not the leading, part in the controversy with Reuchlin, and had furnished the Cologne pamphlets with poetical prologues, &c. For though a stiff champion of the old method, he made pretensions to unite with Philosophy' a smattering of 'Letters.' His correspondents are fictitious personages, supposed to be young graduates (Magistri) dispersed through the various Universities of Germany. They entertain the worthy Professor with their studies and occupations, their quarrels and brawls, and pour with an unreserve, confident of sympathy, the history of their joys and sorrows into his

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friendly ear. Their sorrows are chiefly the affronts and contumelies they meet at the hands of the upstart race of the Poets,' who are ruining the credit of 'good learning' in the Universities; their joys, of suppers and carousals, and loveadventures of the least sentimental kind. These scenes of clownish wrangling or tavern amours are heightened, but not improbably heightened, by caricature. Humour is infused through them by the naïve unconsciousness with which the victims tell their own story, and are thus made to satirize themselves. The good-natured Boeotians strut about with academical honours, and gravely complain that they do not receive the respect due to learning. Piety they do not pretend to, but an unrestricted zeal for the Church and for religion makes up for the want of it. Thus they are not hypocrites, for they do not attempt to conceal from each other their frailties. If they conceal them from the world, it is from no wish to appear better than they are, but out of filial duty to the common mother, Holy Church, whose sons they are. Nor are they vicious. Their peccadilloes are only occasional lapses, the necessity of the flesh, not the licentiousness of the mind. They are excluded from matrimony by their vow; their vow it is, therefore, which forces the alternative upon them. They can argue this point of practice with a casuistry in which subtlety and stupidity are ingeniously yet most naturally blended. They belong to that happy class of men who never want reasons for that which they have resolved to do, and who never fail to be convinced by them.

They carry the scholastic quibble into their hours of recreation. At a degree dinner which had lately come off at Leipzig, a dispute had arisen among the masters at table whether a candidate for the Doctor's degree was to be styled Magister nostrandus' or 'Noster Magistran dus. A correspondent of Ortwin, Thomas Longschneider, a Bachelor of Divinity, lays this question before his former tutor with the arguments pro and con. He does not forget to describe the plentiful feast provided by the candidate, the Hock and Malmsey, the Einbeck, Torjon, and

Nürnberg beer. Another time Ortwin had happened to say of a certain Doctor that he was a member of ten universities. The acute Dr. Klorbius reminds him that though one body may have many members, it is impossible that one member can have many bodies.

Ortwin de Graes, who is so called because of the Divine grace which enlightens him, is the general referee in more serious cases. Α

Doctor of Laws meeting in the Zeil at Francfurt a Magister with whom he was at enmity, passed him without capping him. The Doctor excused himself because the other was not in his academical gown. Again, one eating an egg on Friday, in which the chick was already formed, has scruples of conscience afterwards. Will Ortwin, who is known to be deeply studied in all the commentaries on the Book of the Sentences, resolve this case? A brother had indeed suggested that as what was eaten was an egg, any other substance that might happen to be present in it was only there accidentally and not essentially, and was no more to be regarded than maggots in cheese, which we swallow unhesitatingly on fast days.' But these maggots, I have heard a Doctor of Physic say, being worms, are reckoned as fish, whereas a chick is the young of a fowl, and therefore flesh.

With the ingenuity they display in splitting such straws, goes along a ludicrous ignorance of the common points of the classical scholarship of the day. They confound Diomedes the Grammarian,with Homer's hero

of the same name. They are very indignant at the new Latin which is being introduced by Reuchlin, who calls himself, in Hebrew, Capinion.

Greek and Hebrew, the new studies so much cried up, they pronounce useless, yea mischievous. For, first, the Scripture is already translated to our hands; and secondly, it is too much honour to the infidel Jews and the schismatical Greeks for

stuff, How they do lie and vapour! One of them I heard myself telling lately, how that there is in a certain country a river whose name is Tagus, the sands of which be gold - dust! Whew! said I (to myself, though), for the thing is manifestly impossible.'

Yet our Magisters do not renounce their own claim to be men of wit in their own kind. They are proud of Ortwin as a 'poet,' and submit to him their poetical essays (dictamina). They beg him to correct them, and above all to make them scan, for they own that 'feet' are not their strong point. Why should they fret themselves about quantities, though? They are not secular poets,' but theological, and should not spend their regards on childish things such as metre, but look rather at the sense. The good old-fashioned poetizing, such as the Magisters in Cologne and Paris practise, is one thing; quite another is this new-fangled verse-writing, brought in by undergraduates who set up to have read Virgil and new authors. Pliny, and other These secular poets string together nonsense, while the Church poets sing the glories of the Saints. And while the first interpret the Latin authors literally only, the latter exFor are plain the fourfold sense. not the stories of the Greek gods allegories, wherein is clothed Chris

tian truth?

We are not to suppose that the

Magisters' of the Old School sat quietly down with the slights put upon them by these upstarts. The students might follow the new lead. But among the graduates the Huminority. Esticampianus had be manists were in a very insignificant gun to lecture on the poets at He Leipsig with great success.

tried to introduce the classical authors instead of Petrus Hispanus and the Parva Logicalia. The Doctors of the Faculties were extremely galled by his encroach

ments:

But they waited with great patience,

their languages:

How these conceited Humanists strut about with their new learning, and talk of their Virgil and their Tully; but all the old good books, Remigius, Joannes de Garlandia, Cornutus, they say are

pianus, having to make an oration before the University, spake amiss of Sacred Theology. Upon this they held a conclave. And some said,-What do we? If we dismiss this man, it will be said that he is more learned than we. But, said Magister Andrew Delitsch,-"This

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Esticampian is like the fifth wheel in the wagon, he hindereth the other faculties, so that the students cannot properly qualify in them. Then the other Magisters swore that so it was, and to sum up the whole concluded to expel him, whatever enmity it might raise.

And so he is gone, and we would have you to know that great harmony now reigns in the University. And Mag. Delitsch lectures in Logic; and likewise Mag. Rotburg. This Mag. Rotburg hath a book, which he hath compiled himself, which is thrice as thick as Virgil his works.

And in this

book he hath set down goodly things of Our Mother Church, and of the glories of the Saints.-Epist. O. V. i. 17.

This collision between the old

and the new; between the rising intelligence which was invading the universities, and the official ignorance which was installed in the teacher's seat, forms a tragic background which throws into relief the absurdities and grossiéretés of the Magister's private life. Besides this, a kind of unity is given to the collection of detached letters by the allusions to the Reuchlin process. The hopes and fears of the correspondents fluctuate, from letter to letter, with the varying news from Rome. One while they hear that Reuchlin is ruined by the costs of the process, and therefore augur a speedy victory. Hochstraten, too, has received a remittance, and has given a grand entertainment to the cardinals and auditors. But they have no confidence in Leo X. He

is little better than a poet himself, and knows little of the Summa of St. Thomas. The general opinion in Rome too is against them; and they are in despair at feeling all around them in Germany the grow ing strength of the Reuchlin conspiracy:

'Would that I had never begun this cause!' writes one from Rome; 'then I should be now. in Cologne, and have meat and drink to my liking, while here I have scarce dry bread, and nought but jeering and ill turns on all hands; while Reuchlin is better known here than in Germany, and is loved by many bishops, cardinals, and courtiers. The vexations we undergo in this place would move a stone to tears.'

This cursory attempt to convey to the English reader some idea of the contents and tone of the Epistola Obscurorum Virorum, must not

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be concluded without the confession that it is a thing impossible to be successfully done. An historical commentary indeed, which should explain the allusions, and detect the real characters and events which are mingled with the fictitious, would be both instructive and interesting. This has never been attempted; nor does Strauss, in his recent Life of Ulrich von Hutten, do more than contribute a stray light here and there. But the pleasantry of the piece is intimately blended with the style-it should rather be said the language-in which it is written. For the style of the Epistola is not merely a specimen of dog or burlesque Latin; it is a language by itself. It is not the invention of the author, but a dialect actually spoken by the sort of men into whose mouth it is put. Doubtless it is a little overdrawn. All comic effects must be. But it is only exaggerated nature. The basis of classical Latin, interpolated during the long course of the Middle Ages with Church phrases and vernacular idioms, forms the substance of this Vulgar Tongue. In its construction it is in perpetual conflict with the rules of good Latinity, partly from the intrusion of the German idiom, partly from the addle-headed understanding of the characters supposed to write this nigger Latin.

But their usage is so uniform, so consistent with itself, and appropriate to the sphere in which the ideas of these dunces circulate, that we feel at this day that we are reading a living, not a dead, language. Thus it is through their language, rather than through their ideas, that these Obscuri Viri are introduced to us. Their ideas indeed are so narrow and grovelling, being little more than the expres sion of their gross passions, and their hatred of intelligence which they feel to be above them, that they are soon exhausted. A monotony of thought exists throughout the book, but it is not wearisome, because it is felt to be natural to the characters represented, and because we are carried on by the novelty of the patois. Menage has remarked that, with the exception of the Supper of Trimalchio, there

is no relic in the classical writers of that rustic Latin which was spoken among the common people in Italy; but that a valet in Plautus and Terence talks as classically as his classically as his master. Among modern writers, on the contrary, no comic resource is more usual than the introduction of a joyous brogue or pedantic lingo in the mouth of some appropriate character. What is peculiar to these Epistolæ is, that this stage artifice is employed, not barely to raise a laugh, but to expose the mental characteristics of a numerous class in the actual society of the day; a class which was principally remarkable for ignorance, stupidity,

and vulgar habits. Dulness and vulgarity are, indeed, things in themselves offensive, and rather to be overlooked than dragged into light. But at that juncture it was the dull and the vulgar whom the corrupt conservatism of the Church of Rome maintained in the seats and honours of the teacher. The writers of the Epistolæ did not seek them out as a subject for merriment, but had been themselves victims of their intolerance and stupidity. In painting the Obscuri Viri of Cofogne and Leipzig, they were defending at once themselves and the cause of education and literature in Europe.

M. P.

HAD

morable afternoon when we beheld with youthful delight the mayor, the corporation, the squire, the clergyman, and all the other dignitaries, lay and ecclesiastical, of our native town assembled in the market-place to proclaim to all good subjects the accession to the throne of England of her Most Gracious Majesty Victoria Alexandrina, that within one-and-twenty years we should again hear an English sovereign proclaimed, our joy would have been cut short by sorrow at learning that the young Queen on whom all loyal hopes were fixed was to enjoy what might well be called, considering her age, so brief a reign.

That sorrow would have been changed into perplexity had we been comforted by the assurance that the Sovereign so to be proclaimed should still be the same Victoria.

And perplexity might well have given place to unbounded wonder, had we learnt further that the proclamation was to be made, not of a new Sovereign, but of a new Empire; not of another representative of the House of Hanover, but of the formal establishment of a Princess of that House on the thrones of all the deposed potentates of India, the last and the greatest of those_potentates being the Honourable East India Company.

Such, however, are the events which one-and-twenty years have brought to pass.

There are few more remarkable places in the Queen's new dominions than that in which it was our fortune to hear her Majesty proclaimed. The river Indus is the geographical limit of India, but it is not the political boundary of the Anglo-Indian empire. Across that deep and rushing river, which washes the ancient walls of the fortress in which these lines are written, and thence plunges through a gorge of rocks, and for sixty miles pours down its volume of water in a strait and pent-up channel, black, deep, and sullen, its depth being equal to its breadth: across the great Indus opens out the fertile horseshoe valley of Peshawar. From the Indus at Atok the two points of the horseshoe, the low ranges of hills that form the valley, cannot be more than ten miles apart. Gradually the mountains expand, the height increases, till the two chains, sweeping round from north to south and from south to north, meet in their highest point in the exact centre of the horseshoe, in the snow-capped mountains which guard the Khyber Pass. -Beneath this centre, ten miles from the mouth of the Khyber, and forty from the Indus, is the city of Peshawar, justly esteemed the key of India, which locks the door