said to have been unfamiliar with natural science. At one period of his life he cultivated botany*, and even Mrs. Paget records as among the Magyar books which he had read, Pethe's Natural History. During his residence at Bologna he enjoyed the reputation of a mathematician, and M. Libri, whom no one will accuse of a tendency to exaggerate, states that he found him well acquainted not only with the Sanscrit treatise on Algebra, the Bija Gannita, but with all the peculiarities of Algebraic science as cultivated by the Hindoos, and with the curious analogies which it presents with the Algebra of the Western world.

Of the personal character of Mezzofanti, all who have written regarding him concur in speaking in the most laudatory terms. The few depreciatory observations of Mrs. Paget are not only entirely unsupported by other visitors, but are at variance with the whole mass of written and oral evidence on the subject. He was amiableness and good nature itself. Warmly and earnestly devoted to his own creed, he was most charitable and tolerant to every variety of belief. His charities in Rome procured for him the soubriquet of Monsignor Limosiniere (My Lord Almoner'). His habits were exceedingly simple, modest, and unassuming. What Mrs. Paget puts down to the account of small vanity,' was in reality the result of his simple good nature. He delighted in amusing and giving pleasure; he was always ready to display his extraordinary gifts, partly for the gratification of others, partly because it was to himself an innocent and amusing relaxation: but the idea of display was the last that occurred to him as a motive of action. We can say from our own observations that never, in the most distinguished circle, did he give himself to those linguistic exercises with half the spirit which he evinced among his humble friends, the obscure and almost nameless students of the Propaganda; nor could any one who knew Mezzofanti doubt the full sincerity of the sentiment which he expressed to Görres: Alas! what will all these languages avail me towards the kingdom of Heaven, 'since it is by works, not words, we must win our way thither!'

It only remains to be added, that, as an author, Mezzofanti, unfortunately, is all but unknown. He himself stated that, from weakness of the chest, he had always found the labour of writing excessively distressing; and with the exception of a few dissertations (chiefly philological, but in part also critical and hermeneutical) his pen appears to have been entirely unproductive. One of these dissertations, on the curious philoÎogical problem of the Language of the Sette Comuni' (a dis

trict near Vicenza), is supposed to have been peculiarly interesting; but, unfortunately, no trace either of this or of an equally interesting essay, On the Comparative Signs of Language, which he is also known to have composed, has been found among his papers. The only known published composition of Mezzofanti is a panegyric of his old friend and professor, Padre Emanuel da Ponte, which was read by him at the Institute of Bologna in 1819, and is published in the Opuscoli "Letterari di Bologna.'

In taking leave of Mezzofanti, we must repeat that our admiration of his undisputed attainments is in no wise diminished by this reluctance to pronounce a definitive judgment on one particular point of his literary character-the precise degree of his familiarity with the several languages which he is reputed to have known. We felt that we should not really honour his name by echoing the vague and undiscriminating praise of the unlearned crowd. It is far more difficult to establish the reputation of a linguist now-a-days than it was in his early career. Many of the officials of the Bibliothêque Imperiale at Paris, or of the British Museum (and high upon the list stands the gentleman to whose extremely interesting paper we owe so muchMr. Watts,) are required, by the every-day exigencies of their official position, to possess as many languages as, some years back, would almost have sufficed to constitute a Mithridates. The difference between the excellence of linguists now-a-days, must be sought more in the degree of their familiarity with the several languages, than in the absolute number of languages which they possess. And although Mezzofanti is proved to have possessed a truly marvellous familiarity with a number of languages certainly beyond all precedent, yet there must still remain much obscurity, both as to the total number of languages which he knew, and the precise degree of his knowledge of some among the number.

Perhaps some yet undiscovered evidence may resolve these curious and interesting doubts. In the meantime, we must content ourselves, like Mr. Watts, with pronouncing him, despite of every drawback and every doubt, the greatest linguist the world has ever seen.'

ART. III.-1. The Cloister Life of the Emperor Charles the Fifth. By WILLIAM STIRLING. 3rd edition. London,

1853. 8vo. 2. Charles-Quint. Chronique de sa Vie intêrieure et de sa V politique, de son Abdication, et de sa Retraite dans le Cloître de Yuste. Par AMÉDÉE PICHOT. Paris, 1854. 8vo.

3. Charles-Quint. Son Abdication, son Séjour, et sa Mort au Monastère de Yuste. Par M. MIGNET. Paris, 1854. 8vo. 4. Retraite et Mort de Charles-Quint au Monastère de Yuste. Lettres inédites d'aprez les originaux conservés dans les Archives Royales de Samancas. Par M. GACHARD. Tome 1er. Bruxelles, Gand, et Leipsig, 1854.

THE influence of individuals on the destinies of the world is generally small. The great majority even of the rulers of mankind merely co-operate in a movement which would have pursued its pre-appointed track as rapidly and as completely if they had never existed. Their work may be well done; but, if they were not there, it would be done just as well by some one else. A few eminent men, whose talents and energy have been aided by fortune, have been able perceptibly to accelerate or perceptibly to retard, the progress of events. Hannibal was among the greatest statesmen, and was perhaps the greatest general, that the world has seen. All that his talents and his energy wielding the whole power of Carthage could do was to delay her fall for a few years. If Rome had not had Hannibal for an opponent she would have subdued Carthage a little sooner if she had not had Cæsar for a leader she would have subdued Gaul a little later. If he had endeavoured to support her republican institutions, they might have lasted until his death. The fall of Carthage, of Gaul, and of the Roman republic were questions merely of time. But circumstances from time to time occur when the balance between two great events, or between two great systems of events, is so equally poised that the impulse given by a single hand may be decisive. If Lycurgus had died in infancy, the whole history of Greece might have been altered, and a change in the fortunes of Greece might have been a change in the fortunes of the world. The Athenian domination might have extended over Sicily and Magna Græcia, Rome might have been stifled in her early adolescence, and who can say what would now be the state of Europe if she had not undergone the Roman domination or

received the Roman law? If the Barbarian invasion had found her a Greek or a Carthaginian empire?

The beginning of the sixteenth century was one of these critical periods. Great forces, material and mental, were then opposed. The events which were to be the result of their conflict have not yet exhausted their influence: they may affect the human race for many centuries to come. And these forces were so nicely balanced that the preponderance of religion or of superstition, of free inquiry or of unreasoning conformity, of France or of Germany, depended on the conduct of Charles V. and of Luther.

There seem to us to be no grounds for supposing that, if Luther had died, in 1506, a novice in the Augustinian convent of Erfurth, the Reformation, such as it now is, would have taken place. At first sight, indeed, it may appear that the corruptions which he attacked were too gross and palpable to endure the improved intelligence of modern Europe. But we must recollect that on his death Protestantism ceased to extend itself. Its limits are now nearly such as he left them. What was Popish in 1546 remains Popish now. Nor is this to be ascribed to inferiority of political institutions or of cultivation. democratic cantons of Switzerland, and the well-governed, industrious Flemings, are as strenuous in their adherence to Roman Catholicism as the despotically ruled Danes have been in their rejection of it.

The

The most highly civilised portions of the Continent are France, Italy, the Low Countries, and Germany. Not onefourth of their inhabitants are Protestants. If the inherent vices of Popery have not destroyed it in France; if it has withstood there the learning and wisdom of the seventeenth century, the wit and license of the eighteenth, and the boldness and philosophy of the nineteenth, what right have we to assume that those vices would have been fatal to it in Great Britain?

Nor can the permanence of Roman Catholicism be accounted for by its self-reformation. Without doubt, with the improved decorousness of modern times, some of its grossest practical abuses have been removed or palliated. Indulgencies are no longer on public sale. The morals in monasteries and convents, and those of the secular clergy, are decent: there is less of violent active persecution. But a church which claims to be infallible cannot really reform her doctrines. Every error that she has once adopted becomes stereotyped, every step by which she has diverged from truth is irretrievable. All the worst superstitions of the Romish Church are maintained by her at this instant as stoutly as they were when Luther first renounced her

communion. The prohibition of inquiry, the reliance on legendary traditions, the idolatry of relics, the invocation of Saints, the adoration of the Virgin Mary, the merit ascribed to voluntary suffering, and to premeditated uselessness, the conversion of the Sacraments into charms, of public worship into a magic in'cantation muttered in a dead language, and of the duty of • Christian Holiness into fantastic penances, pilgrimages, scapularies, and a whole train of superstitious observances worthy of paganism in its worst forms,'* are all in full vigour among many of the Teutonic races and among all the nations whose languages are derived from the Latin. The clergy of France, once the most intelligent defenders of the liberties of the Gallican Church, are now more ultramontane than the Italians.

6

We repeat our belief that if Luther had not been born, or if he had wanted any one of that wonderful assemblage of moral and intellectual excellences that enabled him to triumph in the most difficult contest that ever was waged by man, if he had had less courage, less self-devotion, less diligence, less sagacity, less eloquence, less prudence, or less sincerity, the Pope would still be the Spiritual ruler of all Western Europe and America, and the peculiar doctrines of Romanism would prevail there, doubted indeed, or disbelieved, or unthought of, by the educated classes, and little understood by the uneducated, but conformed to by all.

On the other hand, if Charles V. had been able, like the Elector of Saxony and the Landgrave of Hesse, to shake off the prejudices of his early education, if, like them, he had listened to Luther with candour, and, like them, had been convinced, and, instead of striving to crush the Reformation, had put himself at its head, a train of consequences would have been set in motion not less momentous than those which would have followed the submission or the premature death of Luther.

The Reformation would have spread over the whole of Germany and of the Netherlands. The inhabitants of those vast countries were all eager to throw off the dominion of Rome, and were kept under her yoke only by the tyranny and persecution of Charles. Germany would have remained an empire. It required the enthusiasm of a religious cause to rouse her feudatories to rise against their sovereign, and to force on him a treaty which, in fact, admitted their independence. It was to the treaty of Passau, to the shock then given to the Imperial sovereignty, that the Elector of Brandenburg, a hundred and fifty years after, owed his crown, and the Emperor, who had re

* Whately's Errors of Romanism, Essay vi. sect. 3.