world, perfection is attainable only through the strife of contending elements. In the history of mankind, we see all great successes secured by struggles; and even the gospel of peace was propagated by the sword. The opposition between catholicism and protestantism, and the contentions occasioned thereby, are in no sense misfortunes for mankind. Had protestantism become prevalent in Europe, to the total extinction of its rival creed, this victory (had no new opponent arisen) might have led to an insupportable self-assumption in human intellect, and eventually to a phariseeism in religion, which would have made mankind the victims of a barren, comfortless selfconceit. Had, on the other hand, catholicism succeeded in suppressing protestantism, the clergy would have held mankind through centuries in its trammels, and later times must have presented the spectacle of an Egyptian hierarchy, and a priestly mythology, in which freedom of thought and investigation would have been stifled. But it was otherwise decreed. By their mutual strife both have been benefited. Popery has lost its influence, and now exists only in empty form,-a monument of past and fallen grandeur. But catholicism, which must be distinguished from popery, still exists, as the representative of the infantine creed, and also of the youthful age of mankind. Protestantism elevates the reason, and thus becomes the representative of the inanly age. Catholicism warns protestantism against adoring reason as its sole divinity;-thus the voice of Dryden: "Dim as the borrow'd beams of moon and stars To lonely, weary, wandering travellers, So reason to the soul;-and as on high Protestantism cautions catholicism not to blind the eyes of faith, lest -man the truth With superstitions and traditions taint, as your great poet exclaims, for whose inward eye beauty had revealed herself, whilst his mortal vision was dimmed by night. Both, then, catholicism and protestantism, tending to the same source, that of truth, will eventually meet and join in a reconciliation, which must lead to the perfection of mankind, when the one fold, or invisible church, shall have but one flock. No one can venture to express a hope as to when this period shall arrive. Centuries are but drops in the ocean of eternity; and I can conceive no stronger evidence of human vanity and pride, than when man loses all belief in the dignity of his nature, if he, the short-sighted mortal, do not enjoy, during the span of time allotted to him, those fruits, to the production of which the past and present have worked, and are working. With the Reformation, or, in other words, with the development of reason, we see, then, mankind fully entered on the manly age. But such a transition could not take place quietly. Various are the passions which, at this period of life, tear the individual man, who is striving after truth; and European mankind were exposed to a similar struggle. But the fairest flowers are often unfolded by the storm; and, amid the agitations of the sixteenth century, Europe shows a rare assemblage of genius. Raphael and Luther were born in the same year: Shakspeare and Cervantes died on the same day. In Germany, the heart of Europe, where the strife commenced, the movement was more powerful than elsewhere. Scientific life, which had hitherto remained torpid under scholastic forms, now re-awakened with a zeal which ensured success. Faith, liberated by Luther, joined with reason; an union which, as we have above hinted, produced the perfect metamorphosis of the century. Luther himself, in whom both these mental faculties were so wonderously combined, was the faithful representative of his period, which, uniting youthful enthusiasm with manly strength, formed the groundwork of the character of modern times. It must, however, be admitted, that the state of mental cultivation in Germany, during the two hundred years succeeding the Reformation, by no means corresponded to that great act of religious emancipation, or even to the progressive improvement perceptible among other nations at the same period. cure. While sciences, and, above all, art and poetry, were unfolding themselves in unprecedented glory throughout Italy, Spain, England, and France, Germany lingered behind, as a tardy learner. It is true that protestantism stood forth as the representative of reason among the German people; but they resembled the patient, who, being restored to sight by a successful operation, incautiously exposes himself to a full and sudden glare, and thus retards his perfect The confusion which followed Luther's death was turned to the best account by policy, which may be called the representative of self-interest. On the one hand the house of Austria, under the pretext of suppressing the unbelievers, was striving for monocracy; on the other, the German princes, ostensibly the defenders of rational faith and public freedom, were, in reality, employed in loosening the band that bound them to the republican system of the empire; the house of Habsburg having taught them to distinguish between their private interests and those of the imperial union. Three great national calamities were consequent on the disastrous thirty years' war: namely, first, the independence of the German princes of the Empire, which empire thenceforth presented no one great idea, and of which the dissolution was in effect pronounced by the Westphalian treaty, though in mere form it existed for one hundred and fifty years after that peace; second, the immediate result of the just-named event, a dissolution of the national unity; and, last, the interference of French diplomacy with the internal state of Germany,-an interference which had the most mischievous effect on the morals, manners, and language of the nation. Thenceforward, Germany was the arena where the continental nations fought their battles; and while German politicians were asserting their rights with the pen, the warriors of France cut the Gordion knot with the sword. The true national self-respect was not regained by the German people before the year 1813. This political and moral state of the nation was intimately and constantly connected with its literary and mental culture; and the progress of civilization, retarded by continual warfare, was comparatively slow. From time to time, however, the voice of Poetry was heard; but it was too often weakened by the prevailing predilection for foreign models. The German poets of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and first half of the eighteenth century, were wanting neither in fancy nor in feeling, in depth of thought nor in acuteness of intellect, but generally deficient in taste. Since the middle of the last century, Germans have been striving for this standard of all true art. How far they may have succeeded, you yourselves, gentlemen, will be enabled to decide in the second term of my course on Literature, when we shall, together, investigate the productions of those great minds who have restored the glory of the German character in the eyes of other nations. I need not particularly point out the progress of |