Hildebrand; and the Normans, the ready servants of the Church in Italy, and wherever else their interests were identical, put in force the papal judgments. Hence the Conquest partook of the character of a crusade. Men flocked to the Pope's consecrated banner from almost all Europe. "They came from Flanders and the Rhine, from Burgundy, Piedmont, and Acquitaine." It seems as if all Europe rushed to the island to reduce it under the power of the successor of St. Peter. William granted the utmost liberty to the Clergy, and they became more powerful in England than in any other European state; at one time they possessed half the lands of the country, and even now, our author affirms, the revenues of the English Church surpass those of all the other Christian Churches in the world put together.

Since France has always been the chief seat of the Celtic race, and is at present recognised as the representative of the old Gaulish mind, M. Michelet enters into the question of the races which inhabited France. Contrary to the opinion of many English Antiquarians, he claims the Belgic as a Celtic race, and we think with good reason. The antiquarian feud between Celts and Goths which occupied so much of the attention of English scholars in the last century, seems now almost forgotten-yet the English constantly boast of their Teutonic origin, and endeavour to show that they are of a different race from the French. It is singular, however, that those who allow that the Britons were Celtic should believe that they were exterminated by the Saxons from our soil, and yet agree that the German conquerors left the Celtic races entire in France for France is much more exposed to invasion than Britain-the stream of the Rhine once crossed, the Germans found no natural barrier to their progress— and many Teutonic races, the Goths, the Burgundians, and Franks, made its soil their battle-field; indeed, the immigration of Germans began before the time of Cæsar, and he recommended himself to the Gauls by driving away their enemy. Thus Gaul, we may believe, possesses more of the German blood than Britain, which, separated from the continent by the sea, and guarded by France from the German tribes, can have received but comparatively few colonists. Of these colonists the Saxons have indeed

given us language, laws, and manners; but this is no proof that they were numerous, for thus did the Roman colonists (certainly a small body) to France. The English have been led to believe implicitly in their Saxon origin, by the similarity of language and by a natural pride which makes us desire to believe that we are descended from the conquering rather than the conquered party. It was in the same spirit that the Britons claimed a descent from the Trojan Brutus, that they might establish a relationship to their Roman invaders, and as the Russians of the present day claim a descent from the Greeks of old. Englishmen are in the habit of citing their national character as a proof that they are of a different race to the French-but we find in the inhabitants of Brittany, undoubtedly a Celtic people, that sturdy, obstinate, grave character attributed to the English. "The genius of Brittany," observes M. Michelet, "is that of indomitable resistance and intrepid opposition, self-opiniated, blind-witness Moreau, the opponent of Bonaparte. This is yet more apparent in the history of philosophy and literature. The Breton Pelagius, who mixed the spirit of Stoicism with Christianity, and first defended in the Church the doctrine of the freedom of the human will, had for successors the Breton Abailard and the Breton Descartes. Each of these three gave the direction to the philosophy of their age."

This Breton people then possess all those characteristics, modified of course by their position, which we are in the habit of saying are peculiar to England. In one respect, however, the English and French races are opposed. The Western provinces of France are naturally those in which the German tribes last settled and had least influence, while the Eastern and Southern coasts of England which are opposite to France are those which received most of all the Saxon invaders. So observes M. Michelet-England presents to France that part which is most Germanic, and France opposes to England a Celtic front. But though the Eastern and Southern counties undoubtedly were much colonised by the Saxons, the West, which are now the most important, have received less of the German element, and the inhabitants of Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire violate the truth of History when they call themselves Saxons.

The vast majority of the English nation then are descended from the same Celtic stock as the French; and the differences between the nations are such as different position, circumstances, and climate inevitably make on the most closely-related nations-already the inhabitants of the United States have different physical and moral characteristics to ourselves; and the course of centuries may perhaps estrange them as much from us as we are estranged from the French.

M. Michelet, in describing the characteristics of the German tribes, seems to attribute their peculiarities to a certain vague İdealism of mind; hence he speaks of that "vast and vague Germany;" but to us it seems that the want of unity in the German nations and centralization of German thought, is rather to be attributed to the form of their country than any peculiar conformation of Mind. France is a unity formed by Nature; the North and South are dependent one on another, and their different productions occasion the reciprocities of trade; but Germany is divided by Nature into the basins of the Danube, the Rhine, and the Elbe, and the Mountain ranges of Bohemia, inhabited by a Sclavonic people, divide the North from the South-while the general sameness of her productions in all parts of the country prevent that union which is produced by commerce. The North of Germany has little to demand from the South, or the South from the North. From this naturally proceeds want of centralization and vagueness.

In taking leave of M. Michelet's work, we must refer to the pleasant picture he draws of himself in his study. With that graceful egotism which distinguishes his countrymen, he places us at once by his side in that vast repository of the archives of the French kingdom, which were collected from all the different provinces at the time of the French Revolution, and which fill the "triple Hotel of Clisson, Guise, and Loubise, antiquity in antiquity, history in history." He claims the merit of examining this vast repository of the acts of the Kings of France, and enters upon his task with an enthusiasm as earnest, though not as grotesque, as that of Dominie Samson. He thus describes his feelings :

"For my part, when I entered for the first time into these catacombs of manuscripts, this admirable Necropolis of national monu

ments, I said willingly, like that German entering into the Monastery of Saint Vannes, This is the habitation I have chosen, and my repose from age to age.' At the same time I was not long in perceiving that amidst the apparent silence of these galleries there was a movement, a murmur, which was not that of death. These papers, these parchments, desired nothing better than to return to day. These papers are not papers, but the lives of men, of provinces, of peoples.All lived and spoke and surrounded the author with an army of a hundred languages, which rudely put to silence the great voice of the Republic and the Empire."

We hope that their voices will be with him in his further researches, and enable him to describe as eloquently and faithfully the rest of the history of his country, as he has done the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, and Louis the Saint.

CHRISTIAN TEACHER.-No. 28.

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ART. IV. THE CATHOLIC SERIES.-ESSAYS. Second Series. By R. W. Emerson. London: John Chapman, 121, Newgate-street. 1844.

We give a welcome-hearty, fearless, and sincere,-to this second series of Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. We like it better than the first. It looks more round its topics, and handles them therefore in a fuller and fairer spirit. Judging of Mr. Emerson by his first series, we should have said that his object was to give the neglected sides of things. He always looked like counsel for the plaintiff. If there were any injured, oppressed, neglected view of a subject, he took it up con amore, and argued for it as if it were the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It required a very intelligent, or a very hard-hearted jury not to give him a verdict. And yet how often would he have laughed at the jury who did so! To ourselves, while reading his brilliant and ex parte pleadings, the counsel for the other side was always putting in a word, and thus we went through the Essays as in a double light, distracting faith. The greater part of this peculiarity has disappeared in the present series, and the consequence is, that though sounder and truer in its views, and therefore more satisfying to those who like truth quite as well as talent, it is less provocative and stimulative. In his former series, Mr. Emerson was a porcupine in our path; in the present, his quill is more faithful and friendly, but less prickly. We do not so often cry out with pain and indignation, but we perhaps therefore do not cry out so often at all. What we mean may be illustrated without any long comparison of whole Essays, by a single paragraph from one :

"Thus we settle it in our cool libraries, that all the agents with which we deal are subalterns, which we can well afford to let pass, and life will be simpler when we live at the centre and flout the surfaces. I wish to speak with all respect of persons; but sometimes I must pinch myself to keep awake and to preserve the due decorum. They melt so fast into each other, that they are like grass and trees, and it needs an effort to treat them as individuals. Though the uninspired man certainly finds persons a conveniency in household matters, the divine man does not respect them he sees them as a rack of clouds, or a fleet of ripples, which