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jealousies between the native Savoyards and the new comers, between the teachers of new and seditious doctrines and those who held fast their old faith and time-honoured allegiance, begat a succession of disturbances which wasted the strength of the state, and called forth prevention and punishment. this, the constant rebellions fomented among the Vaudois by specutheir ministers, authorized by their own doctrines, and lated on by the foreign foe, and we have at once a very sufficient reason why the rulers of that frontier state, the dukedom of Savoy, should interpose with summary vigour, and even with severity, to crush the serpent rather than to scotch it. Let us remember, that among the doubts which colampadius was requested to resolve, there was one, whether the civil laws which regulate the world are approved of by God,-that the division of the earth into distinct kingdoms, and of men into peoples and nations, was reprobated as sinful,-that they forbade the custom of property among their faithful,-that they condemned oathtaking as mortally sinful,-that they treated as an assassin the judge who condemned another to death,-that they denounced as murderous all who were engaged in a war however just,—that they proclaimed all popes, emperors, kings, and princes, who should act otherwise in these particulars than they would have them, as indubitably damned,and that, finally, they exerted all their zeal, and all their influence, to propagate generally these doctrines, so incompatible with the welfare, or even the existence, of society. Let us call all this to our recollection, and we shall not wonder that the Dukes of Savoy have done their best to discourage the profession of Vaudois opinions, and to circumscribe the sectaries in their means of mischief. In general, Botta, the historian of Italy, misses no occasion of doing despite to the Catholics, and giving praise to their enemies; but of the Dukes of Savoy, even he has been constrained to say:

"These religionists, tolerated at first sufficiently peaceably by the princes of Savoy, while they remained in quiet, were afterwards combated when they became turbulent and put forth greater pretensions, at the example of the wars which had broken forth in France in consequence of the reformed religion. The power which the Huguenots had acquired in struggling against the sovereign power, served the Vaudois at once for example and support. Thence it happened that these valleys, which had before been sufficiently tranquil, and had even been able to furnish a peaceable and sure asylum to the Protestants, who fled the persecutions which they had endured in France, became troubled and filled with blood, by discords the most terrible that ever mortals have had to suffer."-Lib. xxxv. p. 35.

We have already noticed the loyal and patriotic part which the Vaudois took during the passage of the French army into

Piedmont. We, of all men, are no advocates of exclusive systems; but we cannot help feeling, that the Sardinian government had some justification for its system of caution and prevention, when we witness the base and venal adhesion of this people, as of one man, to the French standard, against their sovereign and their own mountain independence. The endowments which the new government, on its establishment at Turin, heaped upon their pastors, tell pretty plainly under what influence the treasonable junction was accomplished.

The same conqueror who slew old and young unarmed in the streets of Drogheda, remonstrated against the severities of the Duke of Savoy to his Vaudois rebels. It answered a purpose. And the orangemen of our days pause from the soothing remembrance of Rathcormac and Iniscarra, and from the anticipation of future fields of equal slaughter, to lift up the voice of indignation and mourning over the fancied picture of Vaudois suffering. The party palate must be gratified; and truly the caterers are not idle. Enter the library of the British Museum-you will see them there each with his quire of foolscap spread before him, and at his elbow a host of works penned and published on his side of the question years ago, but now dead and forgotten; biographical dictionaries and encyclopædia complete his munition. From these he is culling, with all the spirit of penmanship, whole passages of a length so formidable, that in a few days he has obtained almost sufficient matter for his single duodecimo volume, hot-pressed, and quite enough to authorize his publisher to announce the approaching appearance of a new work on the Vaudois, or on the Albigenses, or on the Culdees, or whatever else the subject may chance to be. That any such will take the trouble to peruse our pages,-or, perusing them, will have the candour to abate their foregone conclusions,-at least, until they have made the experience of a more careful search into authorities, we cannot hope. Our purpose is not with them, but with their readers. If we shall have been the means of putting them in possession of a more honest and unglossed account of the state of the Vaudois question, than they are likely to derive from the shallow pages of English polemics, or of pointing to those sources of information whence a purer truth may be imbibed, than their Gillys will supply them with,-we have not in vain assayed the reviewer's duty, in the hope of introducing to their notice the valuable work which we have had such frequent occasion to quote in the most unqualified spirit of approbation.

ART. IV. 1. Contrasts, or a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, and similar Buildings of the Present Day; shewing the present decay of Taste. By A. Welby Pugin, architect. 4to. Lond.

1836.

2. A Reply to Observations which appeared in "Fraser's Magazine" for March 1837, on a work entitled "Contrasts." By the Author of that Publication. 8vo. London. 1837.

M established reputation. He is one of the

R. PUGIN is an architect of acknowledged merit, and of many who have been, in late years, attracted to the ancient and true Church, by her secondary prerogatives of taste, beauty, and surpassing grandeur in her outward forms; and who, approaching her nearer, and discovering in her all that can satisfy the intelligence and the heart, as well as charm the sense and the imagination, have sought and found their happiness in her bosom. Within these few months, we have observed the Siècle, a notorious French paper, accuse M. von Haller of having joined the same Church, rather from an admiration of its social and political principles than from a conviction of its doctrines,-rather as a publicist than a theologian. Let not Mr. Pugin, then, feel other than flattered, if a similar charge has been made against him by a journal too well known for its habitual, amiable candour, to be believed by any one when it treats of Catholics. The "Contrasts" is a book full of life and spirit, and amusing, though unto sadness. It is a "comparative anatomy" of architectural science. It does not represent this science through its different stages, such as was naturally to be expected, as a growing, perfectible science, of which the later periods display a grander or chaster development of artistic principles than the earlier. On the contrary, it exhibits the same members and forms as were once joined together in all the symmetry of fair proportions, now clumsily hung to one another in monstrous shapes and illassorted connexions. It shows us, if we may so speak, the organs of social life, through which alone, as a moral, or a political body, a nation can live or breathe, in its religious and public edifices,-once adapted most perfectly to every required end,-noble in their development, sound in their structure, and healthy in their action; but now presenting no trace of fitness, beauty, or design, to prove that the "mens divinior" has any part in contriving or producing them. If the light,

"Fraser's Magazine," March 1837.

symmetrical, elegant form of the antelope, be contrasted with the awkward, cumbrous, and disgusting configuration of the sloth, there will not be a greater dissimilarity of similar parts, a wider disconformity of adaptation to the same actions, nor a greater impossibility of referring the two to the same class or genus, than there is when we compare the architecture of the two periods selected by Mr. Pugin.

But his plates present us only the phenomena, of which we naturally desire an explanation. It is true, indeed, that the eye decides almost intuitively. Each plate presents a double view of some public edifice, such as it was in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and such as it is now-a-days constructed. We begin with the most solemn part of a cathedral, its altar. On one side is the exquisite screen of Durham Abbey, not as now remaining after the ravages of Iconoclast reformers, an unmeaning fabric of matchless tracery, but ail its niches filled with holy images, the altar restored, and the priest celebrating thereon the august mysteries: such, in short, as the faithful saw it in 1430. Beside it stands the chancel of Hereford Cathedral, such as modern taste has made it, be-pillared and be-pannelled with broken entablatures, pediments within pediments, but without cornices, a mere piece of carpenter's work, with a mean cloth-covered table, on which, as on a buffet, are displayed the flagons and salvers of the communion service. Who sees not that one is a Catholic, the other a Protestant, cathedral? Next come parochial churches; here, from the wide portals of an ancient church, streams forth a picturesque procession, and pours over the flights of steps, which give a nobler elevation to the massive tower and lofty building; there, from the shade of Nash's disproportioned circular portico in Langham Place, topped by the unimaginable ugliness of his column-girded extinguisher," trips out a slender congregation. Who can doubt which is the Catholic, and which the Protestant parish?

Of the next plate, "Contrasted Royal Chapels," we are not sure that the attorney-general ought not to take cognizance. It is evidently Mr. Pugin's intention to bring royalty into contempt. What else can he mean by exhibiting to the public a chapel royal, which he pretends is to be seen in the heathenish Pavilion at Brighton, looking to all intents and purposes like a concert-room, with a double gallery, supported by spindle columns, narrow overgrown pilasters, shooting up the walls to the ceiling, and a ball-room assembly, met, to all appearance, not so much for worshipping God, as for hearing man, under the form of a portly dignitary, who, perched in a lofty pulpit, is no doubt preaching on the duty of mortification. Now, this

treasonable representation is rendered doubly evident by the juxtaposition of fine old Windsor chapel, as it used to be when its choristers and clergy sung there the solemn mass. What is this but a clear insinuation that the presence of royalty itself can hardly throw an interest round Protestant worship, when performed in the temples which itself has raised, in true accordance with its own tasteless forms; while the sublime functions of the old church exactly harmonize with the character of those solemn and sumptuous edifices which it erected? The one thought only of making a chapel for a king, the other, of raising a temple to God.

Sometimes we are really inclined to suspect Mr. Pugin of more occult, but not therefore the less dangerous, malice. When we look at his "Contrasted Public Conduits," we cannot resist the temptation of believing him to have in his eye a most wicked allegory. It is plain, that the beautiful, ornamental fountain, ever affording living waters to those that seek them, without effort and without price, symbolizes the old and generous religion, under whose domination it was erected; while the ungraceful, stiff, selfish-looking pump, with its handle chained down, and the child that comes for water, chid and sent elsewhere by its legal guardian, the policeman, while a long list of fees for ecclesiastical rites stares from the wall, is no unapt emblem of the law-established Church. But what shall we say of his "Contrasted Episcopal Residences?" On examining this plate, we know not whether indignation, or pity, or contempt, be the uppermost feeling in our minds, towards the degraded taste of our country, which could allow such a mansion as old Ely Palace to be sold, pulled down, and replaced by the mean brick buildings of Ely Place; but, at the same time, it does not at all surprise us, that a bishop who has daughters to bring out, and sons to get into the Guards, should have considered a Gothic house in Holborn a vulgar bore, encumbered, as it was, with cloisters, libraries, and large chapels, and preferred a neat, three-windowed house, in a more fashionable neighbourhood. Still, it argues great want of tenderness in Mr. Pugin, to contrast the two so prominently, seeing that the difference of taste has arisen from such delicate feelings of parental solicitude as we have alluded to. For, it is evident, that a married bishop must have "nursery windows;" and, as Mr. Pugin himself tells us, that "the great test of architectural beauty is the fitness of the design to the purpose for which it is intended; and that the style of a building should so correspond with its use, that the spectator may at once perceive the purpose for which it was erected," (p. 1) he must own, that the Bishop of