CAMILLE DESMOULINS.
In an admirable life of Camille Desmoulins, recently published in Paris, by M. Edmond Fleury, his summing up of the character of the Vieux Cordelier, presents a type of some of the heroes of the revolution of 1848:—
"Such was Camille Desmoulins. I have traced his portrait without pity, without hatred, I dare not say without passion. In him I wished to mark the truest and most finished type of those enfans perdus of anarchy who, without ever attaining illustration in history, or serious influence in a government, thirst after distinction and renown; ambitious of credit and importance, scourges of their country, torment of their relatives, traitors to their friends, their own executioners, flambeaux that burn without light, vain and mediocre spirits consumed by the most intense jealousy—presumptuous fools, irritated by their own impotence, intrepid in a pamphlet and pusillanimous in action, they, nevertheless, carried away by the flood which they have let loose, stake, in this terrible game of revolutions, not only their lives, but the honor of their posthumous fame."
How different the aspect of these fiends, as they are presented to us "sicklied o'er" with the sentiment of a Lamartine!
THE BATTLE OF THE CHURCHES IN ENGLAND.
The Westminster and Foreign Quarterly Review, for January, 1851, contains a great article on the controversies occasioned by the recent movements of the Roman Catholics in Great Britain. It is very long (making sixty pages), and very able. Reviewing the battle, from an unusual, and to most people perhaps a not very accessible, point of view, it throws a startling light on many matters forgotten or ignored by the more immediate combatants. It may, therefore, be perused with interest and advantage by partisans of every shade. Protestant and Catholic will find their account in it, especially as helping them to information of which they are greatly deficient—a knowledge of each other's strong points, as well as their weak ones. There is much in the views of the writer, with which we cannot ourselves concur; but we are not insensible of the force and precision with which he has mapped out a large part of the field, and given saliency to some of the great principles at stake; which it is the natural tendency of discussions, involving so much of the conventional and formulistic, calamitously to obscure. The battle in the foreground may be about candlesticks, surplices, and genuflexions. But there are involved many things infinitely more vital, as the author of this "Battle of the Churches" will be admitted to have illustrated with great success. Many ponderous volumes might be named, which have not contributed a tenth part as much to a clear understanding of the question, as this one article in the Westminster. We have not space for a complete résumé of it. We can only present an extract or two. The following brings forward tendencies too little noticed by the antagonists of the papacy:
"A true British Protestant, whose notions of "Popery" are limited to what he hears from an evangelical curate or has seen at the opening of a Jesuit church, looks on the whole system as an obsolete mummery; and no more believes that men of sense can seriously adopt it, than that they will be converted to the practice of eating their dinner with a Chinaman's chop-sticks instead of the knife and fork. He pictures to himself a number of celibate gentlemen, who glide through a sort of minuet by candle-light around the altar, and worship the creature instead of the Creator, and keep the Bible out of every body's way, and make people easy about their sins: and he is positive that no one above a "poor Irishman," can fail to see through such nonsense. Few even of educated Englishmen have any suspicion of the depth and solidity of the Catholic dogma, its wide and various adaptation to wants ineffaceable from the human heart, its wonderful fusion of the supernatural into the natural life, its vast resources for a powerful hold upon the conscience. We doubt whether any single reformed church can present a theory of religion comparable with it in comprehensiveness, in logical coherence, in the well-guarded disposition of its parts. Into this interior view, however, the popular polemics neither give nor have the slightest insight: and hence it is a common error both to underrate the natural power of the Romish scheme, and to mistake the quarter in which it is most likely to be felt. It is not among the ignorant and vulgar, but among the intellectual and imaginative—not by appeals to the senses in worship, but by consistency and subtlety of thought—that in our days converts will be made to the ancient church. We have receded far from the Reformation by length of time; the management of the controversy has degenerated: it has been debased by political passions, and turned upon the grossest external features of the case; and when a thoughtful man, accustomed to defer to historical authority, and competent to estimate moral theories as a whole, is led to penetrate beneath the surface, he is unprepared for the sight of so much speculative grandeur, and, if he have been a mere Anglican or Lutheran, is perhaps astonished into the conclusion, that the elder system has the advantage in philosophy and antiquity alike. From this, among other causes, we incline to think that the Roman Catholic reaction may proceed considerably further in this country ere it receives any effectual check. The academical training and the clerical teaching of the upper classes have not qualified them to resist it. At the other end of society there are large masses who cannot be considered inaccessible to any missionary influence, affectionately and perseveringly applied. Not all men, in a crowded community, are capable of the independence, the self-subsistence, without which Protestantism sinks into personal anarchy. The class of weak, dependent characters, that cannot stand alone in the struggle of life, are unprovided for in the modern system of the world. The coöperative theorist tries to take them up. But somehow or other he is usually a man with whom, by a strange fatality, coöperation is impossible; intent on uniting all men, yet himself not agreeing with any; with individuality so intense and exclusive, that it produces all the effect of intolerant self-will; and thus the very plans which by his hypothesis are inevitable, are by his temper made impracticable. He appeals, however, and successfully, to the uneasiness felt by the feeble in the strife and pressure of the world; he fills the imagination with visions of repose and sympathy; he awakens the craving for unity and incorporation in some vast and sustaining society. And whence is this desire, disappointed of its first promise, to obtain its satisfaction? Is it impossible that it may accept proposals from the most ancient, the most august, the most gigantic organization which the world has ever seen?—that it may take refuge in a body which invests indigence with sanctity—which cares for its members one by one—which has a real past instead of a fancied future, and warms the mind with the coloring of rich traditions—which, in providing for the poorest want of the moment, enrolls the disciple in a commonwealth spread through all ages and both worlds! Whatever socialistic tendency may be diffused through the English mind is not unlikely, in spite of a promise diametrically opposite, to turn to the advantage of the Catholic cause."