combined with an episcopacy imprinting its distinctive character on the whole system. Guizot has somewhere argued, what every student of ecclesiastical history must be prepared to admit, that each of these principles-the congregational, the presbyterian, and the episcopal-can find some justification in the precedents of the earliest Church,-and we might perhaps add, in the unchanging principles of human nature. Had some amalgamation of this sort been possible at an earlier period, it might have satisfied the demands of the best men on all sides, and perhaps spared us a century of religious discord. Usher and Baxter might then have been ministers in the same church. The final aim of every proposed reform should be to allow the Church greater power of free self-development-more scope for the manifold display of her rich inherent life and energyby the removal of restrictions within which she is at present "cabined, cribbed, confined, bound in to saucy doubts and fears." We are persuaded that the effect of this would be—not, what some apprehend, an endless splitting-up into sects and parties, but more catholicity of spirit, a more binding moral union amidst the widest diversity of private opinion and of the intellectual apprehension of religion. We found this persuasion on our profound belief in the moral unity of human nature,-a unity which ever comes out more distinctly with the progress of education and culture, with the subjugation of the coarser passions and brutal instincts, and the dispersion of the superstition which fosters them. Believe in human nature, treat it fairly, and it will right itself. There is a divine element at work within it which it is impiety to distrust. Sects and parties originate in prejudice, ignorance, and selfishness. They will disappear in the light of knowledge and love. The pure religion of Christ carries an authority with it which will be better understood and more freely responded to, the more our inward nature is developed, from its presenting an ideal towards which our common humanity aspires, and in which we can all see reflected the consciousness of our spiritual unity. Men cannot teach earnestly and faithfully without freedom; and spiritual freedom is the condition of spiritual unity. With the most searching reform and widest opening of the Church of England at present possible, there would still probably remain outside of it not a few who retained a preference for the greater freedom and simplicity of the Nonconformist modes of worship. From the present tendencies of thought in many quarters, we think it not unlikely that societies for worship and mutual edification may hereafter be formed among devout Theists, who cannot find the spiritual aid and comfort which they seek in any of the existing forms of Christian com munion. The coexistence of such independent religious associations with a national Establishment would be of great service to the spiritual development of the nation. It would prevent the Establishment from lapsing into apathy, and offer to it that sharp contrast of religious ideas and religious observances which arouses reflection, corrects prejudice, and promotes charity. The members of such communions, having free access to the national seats of learning, and sharing in the general illumination of the age, would no longer be looked down upon as proscribed and disqualified sectaries, but be regarded as the natural and genuine products of an advancing civilisation, and would probably number among them some of the best minds and characters of the time. What we look forward to, and have wished in this Article to indicate, is the step that lies immediately before us. and seems now practically within reach,-a "transition state," to adopt in part Mr. Wilson's words,* "of as much liberty as the Church of England can as yet attain, a state of safety and protection"-more just and reasonable than that in which he is willing to acquiesce-" to those who use it wisely, under which a further freedom may be prepared." What possibilities may lie beyond this first step, who can see far enough into the secrets of the future to presume to divine? We are not of the Church of England, and possibly no changes of which she is at present susceptible, could bring us conscientiously within her fold. But we love her nevertheless, for her many great and good men, and her many noble works. We heartily desire her peace and deprecate her fall. May she work in the spirit of faith and love with those who yet stand outside her gates, to bring on that still brighter day, when the Church shall be coextensive with human brotherhood-when there shall be one fold under one shepherd, Jesus Christ, and God shall be all in all. ART. VIII. THE GROWTH OF ITALIAN UNITY. Documents et pièces authentiques laissés par Daniel Manin. Paris, 1860. Lettere di Daniele Manin a Giorgio Pallavicino. Torino, 1860. “VIVA Dio, andremo al fondo!" was the short and cheerful promise with which a few months ago Victor Emanuel grasped the sword presented to him by his new subjects of Central Italy. • Essays and Reviews, p. 187. How best to go to the bottom of it-to search to the roots of the evil, to leave at last no residuum, no unsettled anomaly which must of necessity provoke fresh troubles and renewed complications for Italy hereafter-has been the one thought of all honestly thinking Italians of every colour of party, whether Republicans, Unionists, or Federalists, for the last ten years. To get, with God's help or their own, to the bottom of it, or as near as might be, has been the end and aim alike of all that has been written or planned since 1849, by the school of Manin, or by the sect of Mazzini,-of the mad and criminal blunder of Felice Orsini, of the heroic self-devotion which has carried Garibaldi and his followers in triumph through the wonderful campaign of this last year,-of the questionable and tortuous as well as of the straightforward policy of Count Cavour. It was to get to the bottom of it that the Turin government risked in the face of Europe a bold departure from the letter of international law. in occupying the Roman territory, besieging Ancona, annihilating Lamoricière's army, and taking out of the hands of Garibaldi the final expulsion of an allied despot without any previous declaration of war: as for the same object it submitted to the bitter fulfilment of a secretly-extorted contract for the cession of Nice and Savoy. The words of Victor Emanuel simply pledged him anew to follow out to the end the idea for which he had fought in vain at Novara with his father, and at Palestro and Solferino with better fortune, only to see his hopes of a final settlement indefinitely put off by his great ally in the compromise of Villafranca. They were but fresh expressions of that traditional loyalty to Italian interests which, from the time. when Emanuel Philibert moved his seat of government over the Alps from Chambery to Turin, has never ceased to distinguish the House of Savoy,-of that honesty of purpose which forced Charles Albert to renew in the short and sharp campaign of 1849 the struggle that, with better chances, had turned irresistibly against him in the previous year, and which marked the beginning of Victor Emanuel's own reign by the stout maintenance, under difficult circumstances, of the constitutional liberties which his father had granted. They committed him to no new principle, in proclaiming that, although Lombardy, Tuscany, Modena, Parma, and the Romagna, had been added to the dominions which owned his sovereignty two years ago, something yet remained to be done; that it was not merely a dynastic ambition to reign over half of Italy which had to be satisfied; that the old spirit was still at work, and that the son of " the Sword of Italy" would go through with the work he had begun. Whatever unforeseen paths might have to be trodden before that work were ended, these words were a public and important guarantee that, on the part of Piedmont, as represented by Victor Emanuel, there was and would be no compromise and no desertion of the great idea, the setting Italy free. The struggle has not yet been carried out to the end. Rome and the Venetian provinces still remain in hands where they cannot remain for ever. The question of the Quadrilateral, before which Napoleon III. drew back, has yet to be solved, as has also the question of the shorn temporalities of the Holy See. For the enfranchisement of the Papal States, the contest henceforward clearly lies in the province of diplomacy alone; while it is yet absolutely uncertain whether the Austrian problem will find its solution through diplomacy or war. Other perils still lie in the path of Italy. But the step which has been made in the direction of her final independence and union, since that promise was given by Victor Emanuel a few months ago, is one of enormous and unparalleled magnitude, so wide and so sudden as to bring inevitably with it its own dangers and its own temptations. The most sanguine of political speculators, however familiar with the hatred of Bourbon misrule pervading the heart of Sicily and Calabria, could not have presumed to calculate on the miraculous success achieved by Garibaldi. No sensible man would have believed, until he learnt it as matter of history, that before fifteen hundred volunteers, with a few field-pieces, whose very landing in the teeth of the blockading frigates of Naples was an act of singular audacity justified by the sheer caprice of fortune, the whole military system of the Bourbon tyranny, from Marsala to Capua, would shrivel up like a scroll. Is it a dream, that a disciplined army of more than a hundred thousand men, of whom at least thirty thousand have fought when tied to the stake with a remarkable tenacity in an unpopular and all but hopeless cause, made no serious stand between Melazzo and Naples against an irregular and half-armed force, at no point equal in numbers, ignorant as a body even of guerrilla warfare, organising itself on the march as it best could, and provided with no base of operations or supplies upon which it could fall back if once beaten? The very contrast of the stubborn resistance offered at Capua and Gaëta, when, until the kingdom and capital were lost, the mere whiff and wind of Garibaldi's sword had unnerved and overthrown all before him, gives a still more incomprehensible colour to the whole story. By what trick of destiny, what peculiar fatuity of administrative blundering, was it found possible to send all the Neapolitan troops who would not fight to the front, and to keep all who would fight in the rear, when a single victory in front of Naples would have been to Francis II. worth five gained behind it? It may be that an indefinite fear of the people his family had misgoverned, a con viction that, whether or not the army itself could be relied upon, nothing behind the army could be trusted even to give a passive support and not to burst at any moment into open hostility, was at the bottom of the reasons which induced the Kirg of Naples to retire to the farthest end of the lists, and only fight with his back to the wall. But the more the campaign is analysed, the more is common sense justified in asserting at last, as at first, that a more daring, self-devoted, romantic expedition of forlorn hope was never set on foot by a few heroes. There is no other method by which the same result could have been brought about in the same or in any determinate period of time; and yet that it should have been obtained by this course was a thing to dream of, but not rationally to hope for. Had Garibaldi failed, even at the last, we will not say that the inhabitants of the Two Sicilies would have been thrown back into a worse slavery, for such might have been hardly possible,—but their redemption would have been more difficult than ever. It was nothing to a man like Garibaldi to throw away all thought of self in undertaking such a struggle; but to undertake it with any genuine hope of success required the sublime inspiration of a faith not springing from mere personal courage or self-devotion alone. That one best augury, our country's cause," is not always, to all outward appearance, the most fortunate of auguries, either to its individual supporters or itself; and its apparent fallibility has been proved in Italy as often and as clearly as elsewhere. From the very nature of the expedition, we think it hardly necessary to inquire at length into the allegations of the complicity of Victor Emanuel and Cavour in the designs of Garibaldi at the time of his sailing for Sicily. It was impossible that, from the first moment when the fact became known, they should not, as two Italians among more than twenty millions, have felt a vivid though anxious sympathy with so daring an attack upon the incubus which no direct efforts of their own could lift off Southern Italy. It is easy to apply the cui bono test after the event; but however loyal Garibaldi's intention might always have been to hand over whatever conquests he might make to his own legitimate sovereign, there could be no security that the most improbable height of military success would enable him to fulfil that intention till the temper of the conquered or liberated people had been tried. The personal dislike and distrust felt by Garibaldi towards Cavour since the abandonment of Nice and Savoy, render it extremely unlikely that he should have compromised his own freedom of action as an errant and irresponsible adventurer by imparting his plans to the government over which Cavour presided; nor is it pro |