New Books.

PRIESTS, WOMEN, AND FAMILIES. By J. MICHELET. Translated from the French (third edition), with the Author's permission, by C. Cocks. p. 8vo. Longman & Co.

THE author of this remarkable book is already known to every country, where there is a literary public, by his powerful histories. Of his admirable history of France, and the novel and eloquent style in which it is composed, we have already endeavoured to give our readers some idea. Michelet is more than a great writer, he is a great man. He writes so powerfully not from mere literary talent, but from the mighty energies of his intellectual character. He has greater objects in view than mere literary success, and his books are no more to him than orations to a statesman. They are means to a higher aim, and in testing his character and powers, he must be weighed by a higher standard than authorship. This character, however, is not peculiar to Michelet, although it is almost peculiar to his nation, for France is the only country where literary power leads to the highest honours and offices. And this it is that gives to the works of Guizot and his great compeers, that breadth of purpose and profundity of thought that belongs necessarily to the philosophic statesman. The scholar in France is no longer a recluse, gathering painfully and in penury a mass of facts together, in what was termed classical language," but is a full and nobly-developed man, amply stored with a knowledge of the past and a vast experience of the present. He studies mankind in every possible mode, with the reflection of books, in the concretion of history, and in the individual, from innumerable specimens, which his situation enables him to command.

All these powers and means are brought into operation in the present work, and consequently it is a book uniting many excellencies: the interest of the memoir, the fervency of a theological inquiry, and the pungency and force of a dissection of human nature. It required a dauntless heart, and an armoury of attack well provided, to enter the lists with the Jesuits. It is a contest of light with darkness, of reason with a subtle form of superstition. To break the bonds of physical captivity is a hard task, and tries the noblest hearts, but to give freedom to the enthralled mind is a deed of still more difficult accomplishment. Of all the varied forms of mental delusions and weaknesses, the common English reader (thank heaven!) can have very little idea. The infinite vagaries of the confined and self-preying spirit or intellect, can scarcely be conceived by those nurtured in the cultivation of natural sense, and in the open air of virtuous and free society. The active life

and free converse of respectable families keep the spirit from the taint of fanaticism, and the mind clear from the humours and corruptions which seem to be unavoidably produced by isolation and priestly direction. To those who are thus innocent and ignorant of the diseased state of soul engendered by the perversions of religion and learning, the present book will reveal a state of circumstances and modes of spiritual existences that are appalling and disgusting. The work cannot, however, have the effect here which it has had in its own and other Catholic countries; because the majority here can only regard it as a curious and wonderful revealment of human mental disease and degradation. As such it is highly interesting, and, as a warning, is worthy the attention of all who are anxious to guard the many from the designs of the subtle and intriguing, whose love of domination leads them to perpetuate slavery in any form, bodily or mental.

The grand aim of the work is to lay bare the modes pursued, and the effects resulting from priestly "direction," which has been formed into, and is pursued as a science by the Jesuits. In fulfilling this aim, M. Michelet displays great knowledge of the entire history of this powerful and dangerous religious faction, and also of human nature; and he pretty well proves that their whole aim is to dupe and direct, sometimes for religious, and often for political, purposes, as large a section of the human mind as they can conquer. They are the first men, who forsaking the mere outward power, sought to subdue minds, and leaving to others the form of political and religious submission, secured the reality themselves. They very early aimed at the possession of the youthful mind of the civilised world, and indeed of the uncivilised. Their predecessors aimed at absolute dominion, by keeping the world in ignorance; they by instructing it. Leo the Tenth said, the printing-press must either destroy the Church or be destroyed. But the Jesuits were wiser in their generation, and said, "No! we will make the engine of attack an implement for our purposes." And craftily and unremittingly has their aim been carried out, from the time of Loyola downwards. The leaders of this formidable band have cultivated and trained to the finest development, two leading characteristics of human nature, enthusiasm and the love of domination. They have drawn talent into their sect from every class, and working upon it, have produced a band of men, moved by one feeling and one principle: fanaticism towards their leaders, and unbending domination wherever it was possible to exercise it. It must be confessed that these motives are too prevalent in all systems of priestcraft; and " direction," as it is termed, is found strongly developing itself amongst our dissenters; some of whose ministers exercise, over the female portion of the congregation, almost as much power as the Roman Catholic Jesuit. In this latter case, however, "the confession" of every emotion and thought, is wanting, and this prevents the obtaining so complete a dominion.

Of all the tyrannies that weak man exercises upon his weaker brother, that which is spiritual is the most to be deplored, because it is the most

difficult from which to escape. It is said that it may be, and is, exercised for good purposes, but the answer is, " direction is never good." It is a mere dry stick to hold up the plant, that gives no strength, but the rather prevents it putting forth its own powers. It differs from education, for that, if duly performed, tends to the self-development of the individual, and gives opportunity for the energies of nature to fully manifest themselves.

The whole question, however, is deeply and eloquently argued by M. Michelet. It has been said of him, and that by English writers, that he has a fanatical vehemence that impugns his judgment; but this cannot be substantiated. He is far from fanatical, but living in the centre of the operations he so justly stigmatises, he expresses himself strongly, as against a reality of which he feels assured. The evils he exposes make us shudder, not from their physical coarseness or vice, not from the worldly and fleshly evil attached to them, but that we are shown a spiritual and mental degradation, that reveals a region of weakness and woe, it is depressing to contemplate; and which becomes appalling from the hopelessness of remedying it. We find a narrowminded, and (at the very best) a conscientious bigot, ruling a weak and enthusiastic mother, who conveys to her offspring all the tenets of this comparative stranger. With such a system of terrorism; with the substitution of such cast-iron and super-subtle morality, for the free affections and virtues of a happier state of society, we cannot wonder that a nation could be brought to acquiesce in a St. Bartholomew's Massacre or a Sicilian Vespers. We find a false system supervened on the natural character, and like all falsehoods, however artfully contrived, it is brittle and rotten; and, as has often been proved, the enthusiastic, fanatical nun passes into the opposite extreme, and becomes the most abandoned of sensualists. The perusal of the work produces anything, however, but a fanatical feeling. And we have not found a sentence that shakes our faith in the grant to Maynooth. M. Michelet is (we understand) a professed Roman Catholic, and all that he and other enlightened men do, is to cry out for "Air." Take us (say they) out of these damp, unwholesome, confined cells, and let us breathe the wholesome air of a pure religion, uncontaminated by the super-subtle and hypocritical direction of another human being, who is himself in a most artificial and undesirable position. Clear away the wretched scaffolding that supersedes and obstructs true religion. The only remedy is a freer and more open converse with the healthy, which will ultimately restore the natural tone and temper of the soul. Everything, therefore, that tends to this is good, and so are the grants to Maynooth, and the establishment of colleges and schools that shall bring men of opposite creeds into contact.

We had marked several passages illustrative of M. Michelet's peculiar characteristics and excellencies, to show how penetrating his views are, and how he traces the manifestation of a principle in the buildings, habits, architecture, pleasures, or literature of the period. It

is the power that peculiarly qualifies Michelet for an historian, enabling him at once to seize the predominating and generating ideas of the age, and follow them in their remotest productions, and to their most unapparent and unexpected results. Want of space and other considerations induce us, however, to refer the reader earnestly to the book itself, and this we the more readily do, because, like all the other works of the author, it is not only powerful and profound, but written so clearly and agreeably, that the most volatile and idle reader will comprehend and enjoy it.

MEMOIRS OF SOPHIA DOROTHEA, CONSORT OF GEORGE I.; chiefly from the Secret Archives of Hanover, Brunswick, Berlin, and Vienna; including a Diary of the Conversations of Illustrious Personages of those Courts, illustrative of her History, and Letters and other Documents, now first published from the originals. In 2 volumes, 8vo. H. Colburn.

THE most rabid devourer of the gossip of courts, and of what are called "illustrious personages," will find enough of that dangerous mental confection in these volumes, and more than enough of the inanity, depravity, and vice, that are as rife in the petty palaces of the princelet, as of the Cæsar of half the world. After perusing these kind of works, one cannot be surprised at the bitter attacks of the writers of the Voltaire school upon all classes and kinds of regality, nor of the crusade made by common sense and the common people against such vile systems of government, or rather impotent domination. Whatever was good in the feudal system (supposing even that the theory was ever carried into practice) had entirely evaporated on the formation of the great monarchies of France and Germany; and nothing but the brutality and stupidity of the savage were left to these representatives of a long line of boorish and half-civilised aristocrats. Mere rank and position, "the accident of an accident," was the only thing or quality worshipped, and we have a strong, but by no means rare, example of this in the treatment of an aspirant to claims not recognised, which occasioned his perpetual imprisonment, "during the whole of which he was not permitted to speak to any one, but was served in silver."

The writer, or compiler of these memoirs (whoever he may be) is neither democratic in his politics, nor stern in his morality; but his revealments of the successive monarchs of the house of Hanover, are by no means complimentary to their heads or their hearts, as the common phrase runs; and whatever credit may be due to the promoters of the Act of Settlement, in fixing the succession on the descendants of Sophia of Hanover, certainly their choice did not fall amongst the wisest, nor the most refined race even of monarchs. Narrow-minded almost to idiocy, and brutal to the verge of insanity, it was a strange freak of fortune that placed them on the most potent throne of the world. Here, however, they proved comparatively harmless, reduced to the mere puppets of an administration, though they ever hankered

after the petty royalty, where their wills would be unshackled, and like the ancient tyrant, would have forsaken the limited monarchy to tyrannise in the school. It must, too, be confessed that five generations have done little to Anglicise this foreign race, and their tastes, tendencies, and characteristics, are still far more German than British. It is sad to see still existing, the same hereditary indifference to the intellectual in art and literature; the same contempt for English genius; the same hatred of "boetry and bainting," as George the Second expressed it; and the same love of the game of war and its mimic amusement“beast-slaughtering." The writer of these memoirs, whose tendencies are towards rank-worship, would alone substantiate our assertions. Of the early career of George the First we have the following account :--

At such a court as this, where the father was a profligate, and the mother little better than an atheist, their associates and dependents were not likely to have been the most exemplary characters, and therefore we are not much surprised that Prince George, very early in his career, distinguished himself by qualities the reverse of amiable and intelligent. The importance of his position he was soon made to understand, but he never could be brought to comprehend the necessity of his acting in a manner consonant with it. As he showed neither taste nor ability for the lessons of his tutor, he was sent to the army as soon as he could handle a weapon; and in his fifteenth year we find him serving under his father in the brilliant campaign of 1675. Fighting he liked a great deal better than learning, in fact, better than anything else; for after his first campaign, he appeared to find no pleasure but in the camp, and rarely left the army but to hurry back again whenever there was a prospect of active service. In this way he visited different parts of Europe, of which, had he not been attracted by the clamour of war, he would not have troubled himself to learn their names.

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Of his awkward attempt to catch the great heiress of the British Throne, the Princess Anne, the author says:

The Princess must have been more amused than surprised by his addresses; and the ladies of her father's court, there is no doubt, found infinite amusement in the awkward efforts of the German lover of her Royal Highness to render himself acceptable to her. But though the Princess Anne declined him for a suitor, his visit to England was not altogether unprofitable, for one of the Universities did him the honour of conferring upon him the distinction of Doctor of Laws!

Of the unhappy wife of this "coarse-minded and self-willed reprobate," as the writer terms him, the story is sad enough. The daughter of an elegant and refined Frenchwoman, she was carefully educated, and was miserably situated amongst these German boors, where she was the victim of a most heartless state-marriage. Some idea of her situation may be gained by the knowledge of the fact that she was brought into personal contact with, and hostility to, a family of demireps of the name of Platen, of whom the author, with somewhat of unconscious humour, says, "The women of this family constituted a strumpetocracy, that for