and Persephone). Then the reasons already | in a way that was not unneeded. Mr. Gladstone's general account of the Olympian system is the most valuable part of the section he gives to mythology, except perhaps the felicitous identification of Here. If it does not add very much to our knowledge, it throws a new light upon knowledge It has almost been forgotten what a unique and wonderful creation the Homeric Pantheon really is. Other mythologies have been more profound, and have embodied higher conceptions; but they have all been confused and obscure, and there is not one among them, not even the religion of Walhalla, that attains the intelligible forms, the fair humanities, of Olympos. They retain too many traces of their origin: their gods are always beginning. Homer's began once for all; and thenceforward they are complete and unchangeable together. They serve not as cumbrous symbols of the life of the world, but as a glorious mirror of the heroic life of man. They have all things men live for: they need none of the things men live by. Their inferiority to those they rule shows no corruption in the imagination which created them, and bowed before its own creation. Being made in the image of man, they could not be made nobler or purer, if duty and danger and effort were to be suppressed from their lives of perfect ease. When we compare the human polity of the Olympos of Homer with the dreary genealogies of Hesiod, who belongs to an ancient though a later period, it seems difficult to refer the contrast entirely to the different character of the poets. If it cannot be admitted that Homer founded the Greek religion, neither can it be denied that the Homeric poems mark a decisive, perhaps the decisive, step in its transformation from a cosmogony to a mythology. The author has not exaggerated the moral influence of the Homeric religion; but be is rather unfair to the ordinary piety of later Greece, when he calls it superstition, because it was ridiculed. The general absence of a priesthood in Homer, and its occasional appearance, is noticed with the tentative explanation that probably the Pelasgians easily yielded to priestcraft, and that iépeus is probably connected with yépwv, which leaves tepós unexplained. Perhaps the Homeric priest is simply the worshipper of a strange god, whose neighbours desire to take part in the benefits of his worship. His commonest name is apýrp, which means the prayer such and such a god, and comes nearer to "worshipper" or servant" than to priest; and this notion would agree very well with the tradition which assigned a Thracian origin to the great priestly family of Eleusis, the Eumolpida. It would be interesting if the most famous mysteries of the ancient world could be traced to the curiosity of the Ionians to witness the wild ceremonies of the Thracian harvest-home. แ to Neither extract nor abridgment could do anything like justice to the rich contents of 'Mr. Gladstone's five chapters on Homeric ethics and polity. There are few things better of the kind in English literature; on the special subject there is nothing so good. The author's only material defect is, that his perception of the youth and rudeness of Homeric society is sometimes obscured by his perception of its real and precocious refinement. He speaks as if Paris when he built his own house, and Odysseus when he wrought his own bed, displayed something of the eccentric enterprise of Hippias when he made his own dress and jewels, and of Peter the Great when he worked in a dockyard. The division of labour had not been carried so far in a society that was still essentially predatory, where the chief perhaps inherited house and land, but had to stock both himself, and the son inherited no goods but the booty of the father (Od. 1. 398). The most conclusive proof that the moral delicacy of Homeric society was a recent conquest, is to be found in the short genealogies, which all end with a woman and a god. It is much more probable that these legends are relics of an earlier condition of polyandry than that they were conventional courtesies invented to screen the involuntary dishonour of high-born women. The section which was called Aoidos in its original form has been retrenched with a severity not always beneficial. It was well, indeed, to omit the detailed polemic against Mr. Grote's arbitrary hypothesis of an Iliad expanded out of an Achilleid; and Mr. Gladstone's own theory, that Homer conceived colours rather as degrees than as kinds of light, gains upon the whole by the removal of its scaffolding. It would have been better if this scaffolding had been replaced by some illustrations from the deliberate, scientific arrangements of Aristotle and Goethe, which proceed on the same mistaken principle. Aristotle's authority would have shown that Homer's classification was natural to a Greek; and Goethe's, that it was attractive to a poet. But it is very decidedly to be regretted that Mr. Gladstone has excluded the charming pages in which he traced the fortune of Homer's creations in later literature; and the analysis of the characters themselves suffers grievously by compression. The author becomes cold and formal, and writes as if he had a definite list of qualities to get through. The only character which seems more accurately appreciated in the new form of the work is Diomed. The business-like element that mingles itself with his unmistakeable gallantry has forced itself on Mr. Gladstone's notice. This shows itself alike in his practical submission to Agamemnon's unpractical rebuke, in the fourth book, and in his eagerness to deprecate any offence being taken at his constitutional protest against Agamemnon's poltroonery, in the ninth. It shows itself not only in the adroit exchange of armour with Glaucus, which Mr. Gladstone evidently suspects of shabbiness, but in his anxiety to secure the horses of all the champions whom he overcomes. Hector and Paris, on the other hand, not only become comparatively lifeless under the process of abridgment, but the representation of them in the earlier work, which was already too severe, is inevitably exaggerated and distorted by the omission of details. No reader of Homer ever carried away the impression that Sarpedon was a better man than Hector, or that he did the fighting and Hector did the hectoring; yet this is almos the impression Mr. Gladstone leaves-perhaps it is not far from the impression he intended to leave. It is quite true that our interest in Sarpedon depends upon the satisfactory perfection with which he performs his part; but then his part is limited. The part of Hector would require a character vaster than the character of Achilles to perform it as perfectly; and accordingly our interest in Hector depends on his pathetic and heroic consciousness of failure. Nevertheless, in the mêlêe and the rout, which after all were the most important parts of the battle, he was inferior to no Greek warrior but Achilles. It was their recollection of his terrible success in the mêlée that made the most valiant chieftains shrink for a moment from his challenge to single combat, where several of them were his superiors. In the Homeric period a man was a great warrior when his rush was as often irresistible as Hector's, even if he was easily baffled by gallant and obstinate resistance. Even Paris, though doubtless odious, is not quite so odious as Mr. Gladstone represents him: he is really, after Polydamas, the most reasonable and judicious person on the Trojan side. As his interests are separate from those of Troy, his prudence is even less profitable to his country; but it is real, and creditable in a sense. He knows exactly how much blame he must bear for the ebb and flow of his courage, and how much he may concede for the chance of buying off the Greeks: at the same time he knows how to hold his own, and to snub Hector upon occasion, in a style which is certainly calculated to prevent a repetition of the offence. His self-knowledge in fact is as unfailing as Helen's: only her self-knowledge is an instrument of self-abasement, his of self-defence. Perhaps it was not to be expected in a way that was not unneeded. It has almost been forgotten what a unique and wonderful creation the Homeric Pantheon really is. Other mythologies have been more profound, and have embodied higher conceptions; but they have all been confused and obscure, and there is not one among them, not even the religion of Walhalla, that attains the intelligible forms, the fair humanities, of Olympos. They retain too many traces of their origin: their gods are always beginning. Homer's began once for all; and thenceforward they are complete and unchangeable together. They serve not as cumbrous symbols of the life of the world, but as a glorious mirror of the heroic life of man. They have all things men live for: they need none of the things men live by. Their inferiority to those they rule shows no corruption in the imagination which created them, and bowed before its own creation. Being made in the image of man, they could not be made nobler or purer, if duty and danger and effort were to be suppressed from their lives of perfect ease. When we compare the human polity of the Olympos of Homer with the dreary genealogies of Hesiod, who belongs to an ancient though a later period, it seems difficult to refer the contrast entirely to the different character of the poets. If it cannot be admitted that Homer founded the Greek religion, neither can it be denied that the Homeric poems mark a decisive, perhaps the decisive, step in its transformation from a cosmogony to a mythology. The author has not exaggerated the moral influ ence of the Homeric religion; but be is rather unfair to the ordinary piety of later Greece, when he calls it superstition, because it was ridiculed. The general absence of a priesthood in Homer, and its occasional ap and Persephone). Then the reasons already discussed are given for thinking that Poseidon was the supreme god of whatever race introduced his worship. It is shown that he was connected with far-off races in strange lands which the author supposes were accessible to the Phoenicians alone; and unquestionably some of these races, like the Phaiakes and the fairy family of Aiolos, have a strong Phoenician character, apart from their origin. There are strong, if not decisive, reasons for connecting the legendary Aiolid houses both with Poseidon and Phoenicia. Lastly, we read of the Carthaginians sacrificing to Poseidon in historical times. From all this it is inferred that Poseidon was the supreme Phoenician deity, whom the Phoenician settlers, Aiolid and others, brought with them to Greece, and maintained as a member of the supreme triad, though they were compelled to admit the primacy of Zeus. As the horse certainly seems to have come into Greece with Poseidon, and as the Phaiakes were accomplished dancers, it is further inferred that public games were introduced into Greece by the Phoenicians, as a part of the worship of Poseidon. No serious evidence is brought forward that Poseidon was worshipped in Phoenicia. The Greek authors who speak of the Carthaginians as worshipping Poseidon do not give his Phoenician title: so we cannot say if the identification is correct. The practice of the Carthaginians in the fifth century could in no case prove the Phoenician origin of an Homeric deity. The Carthaginians were quite capable of sacrificing to a Greek sea-god when about to attack Greeks over sea. The Greeks were quite capable of turning the Melkarth of Carthage into Poseidon; they had turned the Melkarth of Thebes into a sea god already, under the name of Meli-pearance, is noticed with the tentative exkertes. Now, we know that Poseidon was the national god of the Ionians of Aigialos, who worshipped him at Helike; we know also that he was very near being the national god of the Ionians of Attica. Is it necessary to go any further? The Aiolid houses appear chiefly on the extremities of Ionian territory; Scherie and the Kuklopes are to be sought beyond the Ionian Sea. All we know of the Ionians suggests a maritime people, to whom noble foreign houses and powerful foreign races would naturally present themselves as children of the sea. Mr. Gladstone's general account of the Olympian system is the most valuable part of the section he gives to mythology, except perhaps the felicitous identification of Here. If it does not add very much to our knowledge, it throws a new light upon knowledge to planation that probably the Pelasgians easily yielded to priestcraft, and that iépeus is probably connected with yépov, which leaves tepós unexplained. Perhaps the Homeric priest is simply the worshipper of a strange god, whose neighbours desire to take part in the benefits of his worship. His commonest name is apýryp, which means the prayer such and such a god, and comes nearer to "worshipper or servant" than to priest; and this notion would agree very well with the tradition which assigned a Thracian origin to the great priestly family of Eleusis, the Eumolpida. It would be interesting if the most famous mysteries of the ancient world could be traced to the curiosity of the Ionians to witness the wild ceremonies of the Thracian harvest-home. แ Neither extract nor abridgment could do anything like justice to the rich contents of 'Mr. Gladstone's five chapters on Homeric ethics and polity. There are few things better of the kind in English literature; on the special subject there is nothing so good. The author's only material defect is, that his perception of the youth and rudeness of Homeric society is sometimes obscured by his perception of its real and precocious refinement. He speaks as if Paris when he built his own house, and Odysseus when he wrought his own bed, displayed something of the eccentric enterprise of Hippias when he made his own dress and jewels, and of Peter the Great when he worked in a dockyard. The division of labour had not been carried so far in a society that was still essentially predatory, where the chief perhaps inherited house and land, but had to stock both himself, and the son inherited no goods but the booty of the father (Od. 1. 398). The most conclusive proof that the moral delicacy of Homeric society was a recent conquest, is to be found in the short genealogies, which all end with a woman and a god. It is much more probable that these legends are relies of an earlier condition of polyandry than that they were conventional Courtesies invented to screen the involuntary dishonour of high-born women. The section which was called Aoidos in its original form has been retrenched with a severity not always beneficial. It was well, indeed, to omit the detailed polemic against Mr. Grote's arbitrary hypothesis of an Iliad expanded out of an Achilleid; and Mr. Gladstone's own theory, that Homer conceived colours rather as degrees than as kinds of light, gains upon the whole by the removal of its scaffolding. It would have been better if this scaffolding had been replaced by some illustrations from the deliberate, scientific arrangements of Aristotle and Goethe, which proceed on the same mistaken principle. Aristotle's authority would have shown that Homer's classification was natural to a Greek; and Goethe's, that it was attractive to a poet. But it is very decidedly to be regretted that Mr. Gladstone has excluded the charming pages in which he traced the fortune of Homer's creations in later literature; and the analysis of the characters themselves suffers grievously by compression. The author becomes cold and formal, and writes as if he had a definite list of qualities to get through. The only character which seems more accurately appreciated in the new form of the work is Diomed. The business-like element that mingles itself with his unmistakeable gallantry has forced itself on Mr. Gladstone's notice. This shows itself alike in his practical submission to Agamemnon's unpractical rebuke, in the fourth book, and in his eagerness to deprecate any offence being taken at his constitutional protest against Agamemnon's poltroonery, in the ninth. It shows itself not only in the adroit exchange of armour with Glaucus, which Mr. Gladstone evidently suspects of shabbiness, but in his anxiety to secure the horses of all the champions whom he overcomes. Hector and Paris, on the other hand, not only become comparatively lifeless under the process of abridgment, but the representation of them in the earlier work, which was already too severe, is inevitably exaggerated and distorted by the omission of details. No reader of Homer ever carried away the impression that Sarpedon was a better man than Hector, or that he did the fighting and Hector did the hectoring; yet this is almosą the impression Mr. Gladstone leaves-perhaps it is not far from the impression he intended to leave. It is quite true that our interest in Sarpedon depends upon the satisfactory perfection with which he performs his part; but then his part is limited. The part of Hector would require a character vaster than the character of Achilles to perform it as perfectly; and accordingly our interest in Hector depends on his pathetic and heroic consciousness of failure. Nevertheless, in the mêlêe and the rout, which after all were the most important parts of the battle, he was inferior to no Greek warrior but Achilles. It was their recollection of his terrible success in the mêlée that made the most valiant chieftains shrink for a moment from his challenge to single combat, where several of them were his superiors. In the Homeric period a man was a great warrior when his rush was as often irresistible as Hector's, even if he was easily baffled by gallant and obstinate resistance. Even Paris, though doubtless odious, is not quite so odious as Mr. Gladstone represents him: he is really, after Polydamas, the most reasonable and judicious person on the Trojan. side. As his interests are separate from those of Troy, his prudence is even less profitable to his country; but it is real, and creditable in a sense. He knows exactly how much blame he must bear for the ebb and flow of his courage, and how much he may concede for the chance of buying off the Greeks: at the same time he knows how to hold his own, and to snub Hector upon occasion, in a style which is certainly calculated to prevent a repetition of the offence. His self-knowledge in fact is as unfailing as Helen's: only her self-knowledge is an instrument of self-abasement, his of self-defence. Perhaps it was not to be expected that an author who was the first to appre- | The first reports sent to England by Walciate the unworldly delicacy of Homer's singham and by the French Government portraiture of Argive Helen, should have have not been recovered. Three accounts done equal justice to the light fortitude, the printed at Rome when the facts were new easy Stoicism, the not ungentle determina- speedily became so rare that they have been tion, of her tempter and her master. forgotten. The Bull of Gregory XIII. was not admitted into the official collections; and the reply to Muretus has escaped notice until now. The letters of Charles IX. to Rome, with the important exception of that which he wrote on the 24th of August, have been dispersed and lost. The letters of Gregory XIII. to France have never been seen by persons willing to make them public. In the absence of these documents the most authentic information is that which is supplied by the French ambassador and by the Nuncio. The despatches of Ferralz, describing the attitude of the Roman court, are extant, but have not been used. Those of Salviati have long been known. Chateaubriand took a copy when the papal archives were at Paris, and projected a work on the events with which they are concerned. Some extracts were published, with his consent, by the continuator of Mackintosh; and a larger selection, from the originals in the Vatican, appeared in Theiner's Annals of Gregory XIII: The letters written under Pius v. are beyond the limits of that work; and Theiner moreover has omitted whatever seemed irrelevant to his purpose. The cri terion of relevancy is uncertain; and we shall avail ourselves largely of the unpub. lished portions of Salviati's correspondence which were transcribed by Chateaubriand. These manuscripts, with others of equal importance not previously consulted, determine Mr. Gladstone tells us in his preface that he has not yet taken leave of Homer: he has undertaken an analysis of the coutents of the poems, which is to be arranged in the most accessible form, resembling that of a dictionary. There are few writers who would find so much toil anything else than drudgery, even when applied to Homer; and it is to be regretted that a task which cannot be executed without trenching on most precious leisure, is not likely to be forestalled by other hands. But the work cannot fail to be valuable. Not only will it help to give an idea of Homer's power, by showing some part of the copious materials with which he executed his great synthesis, the first and also the best composition of an Age, the most perfect form and body of a time,' that ever has been achieved by the hand of man;' but if it vindicates the soundness and accuracy of the author's general method, it will secure the stability of more than one criginal view at present compromised by the speculations that surround it-speculations which are too plainly the fruit of eager ingenuity, uncontrolled by the communis sensus of those who have mastered the few data yet attainable upon such subjects. ART. II. THE MASSACRE OF ST. BARTHO- several doubtful questions of policy and de LOMEW. THE way in which Coligny and his adherents met their death has been handed down by a crowd of trustworthy witnesses; and few things in history are known in more exact detail. But the origin and motives of the tragedy, and the manner of its reception by the opinion of Christian Europe, are still subject to controversy. Some of the evidence has been difficult of access; part is lost; and much has been deliberately destroyed. No letters written from Paris at the time have been found in the Austrian archives. In the correspondence of thirteen agents of the House of Este at the court of Rome, every paper relating to the event has disappeared. All the documents of 1572, both from Rome and Paris, are wanting in the archives of Venice. In the Registers of many French towns, the leaves which contained the records of August and September in that year have been torn out. sign. The Protestants never occupied a more triumphant position, and their prospects were never brighter, than in the summer of 1572. For many years the progress of their religion had been incessant. The most valuable of the conquests it has retained were already made; and the period of its reverses had not begun. The great division which aided Catholicism afterwards to re cover so much lost ground was not openly confessed; and the effectual unity of the Reformed Churches was not yet dissolved. In controversial theology the defence was weaker than the attack. The works to which the Reformation owed its popularity and system were in the hands of thousands, while the best authors of the Catholic res toration had not begun to write. The press continued to serve the new opinions better than the old; and in literature Protestantism was supreme. Persecuted in the South, |