from the cerements of a mummy has sprung up after a burial of two thousand years!

But, it is the "Bible in Spain ;" and no less interesting and valuable are the views given of this land of old renown; especially of its humbler classes, the peasantry, the gypsy, and vagrant population. We do not wonder our author was hailed as a brother" by the children of Egypt." These wild wanderers appear to have had for him an irresistible charm; their company was preferred to that of the highest noble; their language was studied, written, and talked; their guardianship was sought; their promises were trusted; their wants were relieved; their moral renovation attempted at many interviews, and we must think at great hazard of the principal work he had in view. It is an interesting fact regarding this peculiar people, that, so long as they were cruelly persecuted, they flourished and increased; but now, that they have ceased to be punished for any but actual crimes, now that civilization has begun to tame their savage tempers, they are melting away like our Indian tribes. Their condition Mr. Borrow paints to the life; every virtue except chastity they seem to disown; every appearance of religion, except wearing a loadstone, or New Testament-charms, they discard; every injury they can inflict upon those not of their tribe, so far as it can escape the arm of the law, seems to be matter of general congratulation. Their wretchedness has hardly any limit; and yet they seem to enjoy their forlorn state, and to look down on the rest of the world.

What

But, in Spain, the gipsies are only one degree below the general level. All classes, in all places, with very few exceptions, are in the depths of misery and despair. We are compelled to ask ourselves, as we pass with our author over these untrodden and trackless highways, and through these ruined villages and silent forests, how have the mighty fallen ? axe has been laid at the root of this noble and wide-spreading tree? Has religion, or public policy, or national character, or all united dug this national grave? Full of rich mines, the land swarms with penniless beggars; covered with vines and flocks, the olive, sugar-cane, and banana springing almost spontaneously, the people yet starve, the most fertile districts. raising not enough for their own subsistence; teeming with a population temperate, persevering, honest, and brave, her colonies have one after another dropt off like unripe fruit from a withered stem; her territory has been pared away piece by piece; and it only needs some more greedy conqueror to take

from her the shrivelled core itself. From the loftiest of European nations she has sunk to the lowest. Her immense sierras are almost wildernesses; her noble rivers are choked with every obstruction which accident may bring; hardly one twelfth of the land is subjected to the plough. Marked out by nature for an unrivalled commerce, look we for a moment at the grand naval arsenal of Spain.

"Sadness came upon me as soon as I entered the place. Grass was growing in the streets, and misery and despair stared me in the face on every side. Ferrol is no longer thronged with those thousand shipwrights, who prepared for sea the tremendous three deckers and long frigates, the greater part of which were destroyed at Trafalgar. Only a few ill paid and half starved workmen still linger about, scarcely sufficient to repair any guarda costa, which may put in dismantled by the fire of some English smuggling schooner from Gibraltar. Half the inhabitants of Ferrol beg their bread. The misery and degradation of modern Spain are nowhere so strikingly manifested as at Ferrol.". p. 137.

66

Nor, is this peculiar to one form of industry. Near Finisterre, passing through a miserable hamlet of half a dozen heaps of ruins, still used as huts, Mr. Borrow asked, what village it was? Village, sir! replied a woman, this is a city; this is Duyo." And it was once a city of note. The province of Andalusia, by nature fertile and rich, under a glorious sun and a benignant heaven, now lies for the most part uncultivated, producing nothing but thorns and brushwood; an emblem of the state.

And what is the cause of this downfall? When the great Charles conferred upon his son Philip, in the state-hall of Brussels, the empire of which he fancied himself weary, when he told his deeds of arms and numbered his vast territories, when his kingdom was full of wealth and its name a terror to the world, when its army was the best disciplined, and its navy the largest anywhere known, he little thought that for three centuries that glory would be departing from the eyes of the world. The self-same Philip, whom he so magnificently endowed, with all his craft, energy, wealth, power, made his throne totter beneath him. That course of commercial restriction and interference with internal industry was commenced then, under the auspices of a bigoted priesthood, which has continued to this very hour, and eaten out the very sinews of the land. With all the bravery of the East and the riches of

the West, religious bigotry could not prosper. Gem after gem fell from the crown; degradation after degradation followed. We find it stated, that, as early as 1535, Spaniards were prohibited from working their own mines, because those of America were sufficient. This is the first fruits of that spirit of interference, which only rests with utter ruin. The bigotry of Philip banished the Moors, persecuted the Jews, drove away the Lutherans, compelled the Dutch to revolt, did everything as the agent of the church to precipitate his people's ruin.

The mines which he had closed remain for the most part shut up to this day. The manufactures, from which a selfish and sectarian policy had banished the Moors, were encouraged and intoxicated by the stimulus of a high tariff, until they seem to have been nearly killed by kindness. The Bourbons, who, upon their return, having learned nothing by experience, laid duties on many articles amounting to prohibition, only succeeded in raising the price and diminishing the quality and quantity of the factory-goods. When at last this hot-bed process could go no farther, manufactures sunk into their present lethargy. In no one article is enough furnished for home consumption; and in some cases, the raw material is sent abroad to be manufactured, and then brought back ready for

use.

With a better opportunity for the carrying trade than any other nation, so situated that the golden showers of commerce would seem to fall of necessity into her bosom, everything like a commercial navy has ceased to be. "A few casks of wine, with a few barrels of grapes, are the residuary legatees of her commerce."

The industry of Spain is the lowest possible. Though in Catalan, Biscayan, and Gallego, where the restraint of government is less felt, the people are laborious; yet, as the government can only raise by taxation the half of its current expenses, the laborer is necessarily ground to the dust by taxation. The more he has the worse he is. The gypsies for instance suffering little; while the successful farmer is robbed of everything he raises.

Nor is it merely through the government that the Romish priesthood have proved a curse to Spain. It is true the government has trodden the life out of the prostrate limbs of a famous people. It is true they have committed every mistake, and rushed blindfold into every ruinous measure. But,

why have the people at large lain still to be ruined? How has the peasant, the mechanic, the merchant folded his hands, and let the wrong pass unresisted, unremedied?

This question reaches the depths of the difficulty. The degradation of the Spaniard has been going on year by year for centuries; his own fall has been contemporaneous with the fall of his proud laud. One thing after another has occurred to debilitate his character and crush his heart; and, no angel has yet come to him in his darkness, to bid him, "arise and walk." He has seemed left of Heaven to his fate. The vast wealth pouring in from the mines of the New World poisoned the public veins. Pride of the worst kind was its first offspring, then luxury with its brood of vices, then, in connexion with oppressive commercial restrictions, the most hopeless indolence.

And who shall say, their religion has not hastened this fall, and secured every downward step against the possibility of return? Not only banishing the rival labor of heretics, not only weeding out some of the most active minds with its Inquisition, but, by its innumerable holy-days, its vast indulgencies, its intellectual stupidity, its stationary atmosphere, if not by the vices of its clergy, giving a deadly blow to the Spanish mind. The utter ignorance in which the clergy find it for their interest to retain the people, the gross superstitions, which attend such a grown-up childhood, go very far of themselves to explain the Spanish supineness under oppression; and particularly point to the cause of that hatred of the English, which, in the midst of such costly benefactions, appears so strange.

It may be the purpose of Providence to revive this dying plant, by reversing the process of its decay. Mr. Borrow proves abundantly that the Pope's chief treasure-house is now lost to him forever; that the people are not papists any longer in reality; that the anti-priestly party is altogether the most numerous and growing; that the monks are rapidly decreasing; and that, amongst the commonalty everywhere, blind devotion to the church is turning to vehement hatred; the "exclusive bigotry," which once characterized them, now lingering only among the higher ranks. This very enterprise of his, so Quixotic in appearance, so perilous in execution, so imperfect in result, may be part of the appointed instrumentality for reviving the land of Cervantes and Lope de Vega, Calderon and Mariana, and restoring it to its place among the nations of VOL. XXXIV. 3D S. VOL. XVI. NO. II.

24

the earth. The poverty of the people may be their desertpilgrimage to a land of promise; their sad, civil wars the preparation for a latter day of peace, and rest, and glory. Though the sword, the scaffold, exile, and the dungeon have done their work with some of the noblest and freest minds, we cannot doubt there are true souls waiting but a word to call them forth; we cannot but hope even for oppressed, benighted, ruined, hopeless Spain.

F. W. H.

THE EARLY LITERARY HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY.

NO. II.

THE AUTHORSHIP, USE, AND PRESERVATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

OUR second division of the documentary history of Christianity, is, the authorship, publication, use, and preservation of the New Testament records. As already observed, it is a perfectly supposable case, that our religion might have been transmitted to us without records any at least without records written by its first teachers. When, however, such records are once made, they immediately stand upon the same footing with all other documents. The circumstance of their being written by inspired men may affect their style, their language, their narratives, and their original authority, but it will not secure them from the chances and accidents to which all documents are subject; it will not prevent the pen from committing verbal errors in the transcription, nor keep the ink from fading, nor preserve an ill-treated manuscript, -nor guard the types in a printing office against all mistakes. Sacred records, being once left behind by their authors, share the lot of other records; they are called books, and are treated like books, they have a history, they require explanation, they involve critical inquiries.

Again, if a religion is transmitted in records, it is evident that those records will be appealed to and searched for the best information concerning the religion. Whatever oral tradition, —