the individual prospers, Great Britain has allied herself with a rude and unchristian nation, to restrain the influence of the Russians on the Black Sea; she has been vacillating in her policy during the Italian wars; and she has watched with the greatest caution and dislike, the vigor and enterprise which has marked the government of the present Napoleon. In fact, this narrow and selfish disposition has so impressed itself upon the British character, that all nations look with suspicion upon every move of her diplomacy. The despatches of her Foreign Secretaries and diplomatists are notorious for their ambiguity, their subtlety, and the capacity they always have to bear a double construction. They bear the highest evidence, that those from whom they emanate, practice on principle the maxim of Talleyrand, that language is given us to conceal our thoughts. The welfare of peoples, of dynasties, of principles, of constitutions, must yield to this omnipotent policy. The balance of power must be preserved at the expense, if need be, of civilization, of art and science, of commerce and martial enterprise.

Powerful polities must be humbled, great princes restrained, and national growth warped, to subserve the glory, wealth, and power of Great Britain. No one imagines that, as is contended by a few, incompatibility of temper and difference of character have produced long and violent wars between the neighboring kingdoms of western Europe. When we consider that France has been not only the nearest, but also the most formidable rival of Great Britain, and that the latter has been forced to see, under her very eyes, a people boldly contesting with her the enviable rank of the first European power, the pioneer of civilization, and the arbiter between nations, we need not wonder why the splendid governments of the Napoleons have been regarded with jealousy and distrust from the other side of the Channel.

We cannot hope that this propensity, which is so distinctly national, and which stands as a paramount consideration in her foreign policy, will yield to any interest the English may have in our prosperity either by the ties of kindred, our exemplification of liberal theories, or former confidence and mutual goodwill. Those who see in our downfall the interest of Great Britain, either monetary, maritime, or political, will not, if we

may judge from the whole course of history, hesitate at the scruples of conscience, or the inconsistency of belying former assurances of friendship. We cannot but contemplate with gratitude the good-will of those disinterested spirits, (who we are sorry to reckon as a small minority,) who, rising above national selfishness, and boldly announcing their noble principles, indignantly denounce the American rebellion, and all who, on the other side of the Atlantic, would countenance the disruption of the Union. Such men are not wanting, even among the wealthiest and most powerful noblemen. No one can read the spirited addresses of the Duke of Argyle, (than whom a more ingenuous, energetic, and popular nobleman does not exist,) in which he deprecates with sincere and heartfelt regret, the present calamities of the United States, without admiring the independence and candor with which he rebukes the selfish spirit of less disinterested statesmen. The same feeling, we would hope, from their previous course, exists in the breasts of such men as the Earl of Carlisle, Lord Hatherton, and Lord Brougham. Those philanthropists, who have hitherto regarded slavery as the great blot upon American character, and who are not impelled by meaner motives to hope for our ruin, ought to look upon the present struggle as one in which if not the total disappearance, at least the restriction and ultimate extinction of that institution, might take place. They could not encourage the erection of a powerful confederacy, whose cornerstone was to be slavery, and whose professed object it would be to perpetuate and extend it. Every innate motive which prompts them to abhor and denounce it, should lead to a disgust of those who foster and cling to it. They have employed their rhetoric hitherto in tirades against the inhumanity of the South for maintaining, and the assumed pusillanimity of the North for permitting, the existence of slavery. Certainly, these men ought naturally to be found on the anti-slavery side. Some of them have been disinterested enough to declare in favor of the maintenance of the Union, others have been silent, and yet others have found sophistries enough to evade this issue, and have looked with apparent pleasure on a prospect which we are happy to say looks now very remote, and never likely to be realized, that this popular Empire will be divided into fragments.

Then comes in the cotton interest to mould opinion in England. While such men as Cobden and Bright are fearlessly sustaining the cause of the Union, the great cities of Manchester and Birmingham are loudly grumbling, in the fear that material for manufacture will fail them. Here comes the John Bull spirit again, with all its essence; and while under ordinary circumstances, and in accordance with avowed principles, plainly indicated by the election of radical Whig members of parliament, these interests would zealously favor the entirety of our nation, the great power of self-interest chokes up every nobler sentiment, and we can hardly look for their countenance in the present crisis.

From this cursory survey of the different views in which Englishmen look upon the war now waging among us, we may gather the conclusion, that it is not for the preservation of the American Union alone that we are now sending forth our hundreds of thousands to occupy the fields of Virginia and the ports of the Carolinas; but that the civilized world is intensely interested in the issue. It is, and should be, our first aim to reestablish, on an impregnable basis, the authority of the Constitution throughout the length and breadth of the land. We should make it our paramount endeavor to restore the country to a state of equal and even greater security than we formerly possessed. We should leave no effort wanting to maintain a vivid and successful exercise of the machinery of government; and to give malecontents an efficacious warning against further attempts to subvert the integrity of the Union. But while stimulated by an active patriotism; while urged on by a contemplation of the certain ruin which must ensue from failure; while emptying our coffers, sending forth our best blood, and responding with zeal to every call of those in authority; while aroused by the deep insults offered to our flag and the memory of our fathers, to a spirit of vengeance against such astonishing ingratitude, we should also be incited to more arduous trials and exertions by the reflection that the fate of millions of fellowcreatures in distant lands hangs upon the fidelity with which we maintain the great principles which have hitherto been the darling hope of the oppressed of all nations. It is not merely due to our own highest interests that we should uphold an

illustrious example of the capacity of man to govern himself, but it is no less due to the liberal spirit which we see awakening throughout Europe, which has already alienated the fair land of Virgil and Terence from the dominion of the Hapsburg line, which threatens, ere many years have been completed, to eradicate that dynasty altogether, and which, if sustained by the glorious maintenance of the greatest of free polities, must finally level feudal thrones and temporal churches in its resistless course. Let us not, then, confine our view to our own selfinterest in the present war, but, expanding it, embrace within its comprehension, those earnest and hopeful millions whose fate is fixed by our fate, and whose hopeless depression or joyful disenthrallment hangs upon the success or failure of the American rebellion. To this end, inconceivably grand, let us devote our utmost energies, and never lose sight of the awful stake involved in the issue.

ARTICLE IV.

JOHN CALVIN.

To present in clear colors a true picture of such a man as Calvin, making evident to all both the grandeur and the deficiencies of his character, must be the work of one who stands, in some respects, on a level with him he describes. Or rather, occupying some yet loftier and more central post of observation, he should be entitled, from wider views and more perfect insight, to criticize and to judge. Such a picture we have yet to look for. They meantime who would form for themselves a better acquaintance with this true hero of the sixteenth century, must seek a gradual familiarity in such memorials of his life as remain to us, taken always in connection with the circumstances of his time, in his writings, and especially in his letters, those faithful records of the moment, which often reveal so much. more of a man's heart and temper than the labored productions intended for the public eye.

Every age has an atmosphere of its own, in which the glories of the past often pale and expire, or else shine with an exaggerated splendor which by no means belongs to them. It is only the few, who, endowed with keener insight, rendering themselves, by the power of thought and imagination, independent of the fashion of the hour, yet availing themselves of that added light of experience which is not the product of the present only, but of the present joined with the past, can judge the great men of former times, as they could not have been judged by their contemporaries. There are some, indeed, whose characters seem to baffle even such scrutiny, on whose true motives the world will never come to a perfect decision; and there aré some of whom the world, as such, can never form the right estimate, the principles of whose action are lifted so high above its ken, that its verdicts are worth nothing to us in determining what we should think of them, or on what grounds we should afford them blame or praise. Let us remember these things as we endeavor to form for ourselves some notion of this great Reformer, this bold vindicator of the truth of God against the madness of men; and if at times he went farther in his zeal than the spirit of Christianity would warrant, let us not forget the ages of darkness that preceded him, nor wonder that neither he nor the noblest and best among those who were his contemporaries, could mount upward at once to a full perception of the glorious liberty of the gospel of Christ.

The object of the present sketch will be merely to offer a brief outline of the life of Calvin; dwelling a little on some of its more important epochs, and to display, as nearly as possible in their true aspect, some of his views of morals and of doctrine, especially in regard to certain points on which his opinions are particularly liable to be misunderstood.

John Calvin was born at Noyon, in Picardy, in the year 1509. His father was a notary of the ecclesiastical court of that town, and secretary to the bishop. His parents were in good circumstances, and able to afford their son advantages of education and culture such as few of the Reformers enjoyed. Both remained Catholics to the day of their death. His mother especially was characterized by an earnest piety. She had been taught, it is said, to pray under the open sky.

No doubt the