attempted to draw is a grave one; twice has the effort been made to render the abstractions of a philosophized religion a power among mankind-in each case without success. The attempt to refine away what is distinctive of a revelation, real or imaginary, and to subtilize the residuum into a sentimental theism, has always failed. Such a system must leave the indifferent many as they were, and superstition is unchecked. It must excite the disdain of the earnest few, as a profane and puerile trifling with the most momentous questions which can occupy the mind of man. As its inconsistencies become apparent, it will always be found to strengthen the hands of the parties it professes to oppose. It must urge the higher class of minds into a thorough and impartial, instead of a one-sided scepticism, and so reinforce the ranks of consistent and absolute unbelief. It must abandon minds of a lower order to all those religious corruptions which lull the conscience, and gratify the passions. It has done nothing to reform the world; and, never strong enough long to oppose a serious obstacle to progress, it has been suffered repeatedly to die out of itself. Such examples in the past should much diminish the dread which many feel of that would-be religious scepticism among ourselves which essays to emasculate the truths of revelation, much as the Alexandrian and Florentine Platonists proposed to etherealize the myths of polytheism and the doctrines of Christianity into a vague sentiment of worship.

While the theosophy of the Alexandrian school enjoyed a revival in the hands of men of letters, its theurgy was destined to impart an impulse to the occult science of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is not a little interesting to trace the same mental phenomena at the entrance of the European world on the middle ages, and at its exit from them. We see the same syncretism which confounded the Oriental and Hellenic conceptions together, the same endeavour to hold converse by theurgy, and by white magic, with the unseen world. As Plotinus returns with Ficinus to the regions of day, so Iamblichus revives with Paracelsus and Cornelius

Agrippa. The ancient and the modern cabbalists established their theurgy on a common basis. Plotinus and Campanella both agree on this point, that the world is, as it were, one living organism, all the parts of which are related by certain sympathies and antipathies, so that the adept in these secret affinities acquires a mastery over the elements. It was by this principle, according to Agrippa, that art made nature her slave. As Proclus required of the theurgist an ascetic purity, so Campanella makes it an essential that the cultivator of occult science be a good Christian-one possessing no mere historic, but an intrinsic' faith, a man qualified alike to hold commerce with holy spirits, and to baffle the arts of the malign.

The spirits called by Iamblichus lords of the sublunary elements are equivalent to the astral spirits of Christian theurgy; and those powers which are said by him to preside over matter and impart material gifts, answer to the elementary spirits of the Rosicrucians. Iamblichus and Proclus were firm believers in the efficacy of certain unintelligible words of foreign origin, which were on no account to be Hellenized, lest they should lose their virtue. Cornelius Agrippa enjoins the use of similar magical terms, which he declares more potent than names which have a meaning, and of irresistible power, when reverently uttered, because of the latent divine energy they contain. The 'Shemhamphorasch' of Jewish tradition, and the 'Agla' of the cabbalists, are examples. The great point of distinction between the theurgy of the earlier and of the later period is sufficiently obvious. In the fourth and fifth centuries theurgy came in to eke out an unsatisfactory philosophy, and to prop a falling religion. In the sixteenth century a similar intrusion into the unseen world was the offspring of a newly recovered freedom. It received its direction and encouragement, in part from the revived remains of ancient tradition, but it was pursued with a patience, an originality, and a boldness, which showed that the impulse was spontaneous, not derived. These magical essays were the gambols of the intellect let loose from its long scholastic durance.

In modern Germany, the philosophy of Schelling rests in substance on the foundation of Plotinus-the identity of subject and object. It is generally admitted, that his intellectual intuition is a refined modification of the Neo-Platonist ecstasy. But it is in some members of the so-called romantic school that the fallacious principle of the Alexandrians is most conspicuous. Frederick Schlegel did his best to make it appear that the great want of Christian literature was a mythology like that of the Greeks. His philosophy seeks to throw over all life and history the haze of a poetic symbolism. He was symbol-mad; and, very naturally, became a Roman-catholic deist, to indulge his taste that way to the utmost. He wrote bitter diatribes against the Reformation. He depreciated Luther as the mere translator of the Bible. He extolled Jacob Behmen as the gifted seer who revealed to mortal gaze its inmost mysteries. He evolved as much Christianity as he cared to conserve from the fancies of the Indian Brahmins. Such a fantastic religio-philosophy as this is the result for which experience bids us look wherever men attempt thus to combine a poetical theosophy with popular superstition. Frederick Schlegel was never an authority, and the little influence he once exerted is rapidly passing away. This destructive conservatism—this superstitious scepticism-this subtilized materialism, is a contradiction too monstrous to be kept alive by any amount of mere cleverness.

The dialogue Mr. Kingsley has imagined between Orestes and Hypatia is prophetic. If ever the sceptical intuitionalism of our times should have the opportunity of trying, on any considerable scale, the efficacy of its principles, that prophecy would be fulfilled. It would then appear that the masters in this school are capable of pandering to the passions of the multitude as Orestes did. Their theories would be as impotent to influence the general mind as the speculations of Hypatia concerning the myths of Greece. The same proud selfishness would display itself. The mass of mankind, 'without intuitions,'-the multitude who never hear the mystic voice of the 'over-soul,' or open the avenues of their nature to the

influxes of the All, would be left of necessity to themselves. Their existence is but transitory-their vices the shadows of the great picture of the universe-a necessary foil whereby to exhibit the super-Christian virtues of the philosophic few. They will soon be resolved into the aggregate of souls which make up the heart and motive power of all matter-so, why should they not live as heretofore? This people, that knoweth not our transcendental law, are accursed. This spiritualist pantheism would not indeed restore, under its old names, the Olympus of Greece, as the Alexandrians strove to do. But it would come to the same thing upon their leaguing, as they would be forced to do, with some form or other of that baptized paganism we call popery. These religions for the few, however, with their arrogant refinement and idle subtlety, have played the part of priest and Levite too often. That faith which has proved the Good Samaritan and true neighbour to suffering humanity can alone finally secure its homage and its love.

THE

LIFE OF SYDNEY SMITH.

*

HE curious reader will assuredly have no objection to transport himself for a moment, chronologically to about the year eighty of the last century, and geographically to Woodford, in Essex, there to inspect a small section of the innumerable Smith family. Behold the father, tall and stalwart in aspect, dressed in drab, as though he were an amateur quaker, and surmounted by a hat of the strangest proportions, like that which a retired coalheaver might be supposed to adopt from old association. The mother is fair to look on, with a charm of mind and manner yet more potent than the beauty of that frame, too delicate for long life among household cares. He is of quick, restless temperament, self-reliant, with a dash of whimsicality in his habit; never long in one place; fond of building and unbuilding; buying and selling some score of places in different parts of England. She has French blood in her veins, and the French vivacity sparkles through her native sweetness. So the children, four boys and a girl, have a goodly heritage of qualities, strength from one side the Channel, brilliance from the other. All were remarkable for early tokens of talent. To the boys, books and disputation were as tarts and marbles. They read with insatiable greediness, and would try their skill against each other by fierce arguments on questions beyond their years. No other boys can stand a moment against these practised word-gladia

* A Memoir of the Rev. Sydney Smith. By his Daughter, LADY HOLLAND. With a Selection from his Letters. Edited by MRS. AUSTIN. 2 vols. Longman. 1855.