his lifetime. Then both noblemen gave the signal by clapping their hands, and turned away. In a moment the pile was in a blaze of fire; flame and smoke soon stifled his voice, as he gazed towards heaven, as some imagined they heard, singing psalms,-as others relate, screaming with agony, THE

Such is the account of Huss's last moments and the causes of his death, which the Ultramontanes would wish to have accepted by the world; the change of type in which is Baron Helfert's, not ours. Such is the view of his fate, which was intended to counteract the effect produced by the history of Palacky, which, however, itself appears to us to have done Huss but scanty justice, and to reflect the impression conveyed by his Latin rather than by his Bohemian works, most of which were then unprinted and unknown, except to a few. But their subsequent publication by Pan K. J. Erben produced an effect in Bohemia, the results of which have not yet fully appeared. So great was the sensation produced by the impossibility of finding adequate ground for the condemnation and execution of Huss in his Bohemian writings, that it was actually in contemplation to collect signatures for a petition to the so-called Ecumenical Council, requesting it to review the case of Huss, and possibly to reverse the decision of the Council of Constance, and rehabilitate him as a good and faithful Catholic. But the national press gave so unfavourable a reception to the proposal that it was soon abandoned. The words of the Narodni Listz ("National Letters"), a national, but not a Protestant, paper, on July 4th, 1869, upon the subject are so remarkable, both in themselves and as expressing the general feeling of the enlightened portion of the Bohemian or Czeskish nation, that we cannot but think that we shall do good service by placing them permanently on

record.

We have just read," says the Narodni Listz, "in one of the local papers, that an idea has started up in Prague to frame and procure as many signatures of Bohemians and Moravians as possible to a petition to the coming Ecumenical Council, to undertake a revision of the case of Huss.

"With this idea it is impossible for us to agree, either from the standpoint of the historical traditions of our nation, or from that of modern relations; we hold it therefore to be our duty to pronounce publicly against it, although we certainly doubt whether the wish for the revision just mentioned can have come from the public itself, and can have found adherents in wider circles. What would be the necessary consequences of such a petition, not to say of an actual revision? Certainly only this: that we should thrust anew into public discussion a long ago completed act of the great tragedy of our nation; that we should again transfer an event, which has now only a historical and literary significance for our nation, to

* “ Mucennika bludu a neposlusentsoi.”-N.B. Mladenovitz gives the very words which he chanted firstly, secondly, and thirdly.-" Documenta," p. 323.

the ground of religious disputes, which our age has happily done with, and for which our nation cannot entertain any longing, especially at a time when a matter much more important to us is in question-the preservation of the political and national existence of the Slavonic race in the lands of the Bohemian crown. On this political struggle we must for the time concentrate all our powers. Is it that some of us have a wish for arguments with the hierarchy at the Romish Council on the questions, 'Whether a man is predestinated to or foreknown for salvation?' Whether a Council is above the Pope, or the Pope above a Council?' or, lastly, 'Whether Huss was a good Catholic or not?'

"We honestly acknowledge that, personally, we have not much taste for wasting time in such discussions. These matters have long ago been brought to an end, and belong, thank God, merely to history. We do not wish to sharpen our wits even on the questions, whether the Council of Constance acted under other influences than the guidance of the Holy Spirit, or whether that Ecclesiastical Council was infallible or not. All this we gladly leave to the Fathers of the Church to amuse themselves with at the Council; we content ourselves with the consciousness that the people has long ago hit upon ideas more practical, and much more advantageous to its spiritual and material welfare. To whom would a fresh analysis of the dogmas of Magister John Huss be convenient at the present time? Scarcely to enlightened Catholics, and certainly not to the orthodox Catholic priesthood. This surely will not make up its mind at the present day to receive into its midst, as a faithful Catholic, a man who has been for four centuries and a half excommunicated as one of the most detested heretics. We are told, indeed, that the people who condemned Huss to the stake are dead, and that no procurator at the present Ecumenical Council will be affected by their passions. What do we not observe how even now the representatives of the Fathers at Constance skirmish against the doctrines of the pious Magister of Husinetz? Do we not see how they fill the columns of their papers with fresh and fresh anathemas against the Martyr of Constance? Can we hope from these gentlemen, that, devoid of passion, they will finally acknowledge that, up to this time, they have been condemning an innocent man?

"The projected revision would not therefore be convenient to anybody; nay, it would not be advantageous for our own nation. The Bohemian nation stands no more in need of any such revision. The idea of reform, which it took up as a foster-mother out of the flames of Constance, and suckled with its own blood till the great reformation of the whole Christian world, has long had its character cleared and been recognized, not only by the whole of the present enlightened world, but also by history, which exercises jurisdiction, as a supreme judge, even over Popes and Ecclesiastical Councils. What would there be to reconsider? Perhaps the truth of some of those humble principles which Huss defended before the Council of Constance.

"Those principles were only the first germ, the seed from which through the intellectual activity of the whole nation during two centuries-as even the German historian, Ranke, acknowledges in his latest work-the whole o the great Reformation of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries sprang and developed itself. That Reformation means not merely reform in the Christian Church, it means also the progress of mankind in the path o enlightenment and freedom in general. Our nation, in becoming th fosterer of the modest doctrine of Huss, became also the foremost com batant in the path of human progress. Do you wish by a revision, whie! would be limited merely to the Council of Constance, to depreciate th

JOHN HUSS AND THE ULTRAMONTANES. 259

significance of the whole of Hussition? Do you wish to annihilate that
gigantic labour of great wars, that lasted two centuries, by means of the
retractation of a few articles of the accusation preferred at Constance, which
are insignificant in themselves, and affect nobody any longer?

“Neither do we recognize the need of any revision even from a purely
formal statipoint. Indeed, cur nation has already itself revised the pro-
ceedings at Constance. It revised them in good earnest on the helmets of
the crusaders in the victories at Domatlitz. Onste, Tacher. Sudomer, and
elsewhere. By the power of its arms and the irresistible might of its truth,
it induced even the Exclesiastical Connell of Basle to repeal the sentence of
that of Constanzee. Go to the Museum of the Bohemian Kingdom, and read
for yourselves in golden letters the humble recantation of the fery decision
of the Fathers of Constance!
Ecclesiastical Connell not merely acknowledged the truth of the doctrine of
See there the Compactata.' in which an
Magister John Hass, but, more than that, acknowledged the rectitude also
of the later and much more advanced Hussite Reformation, by declaring the
successors of Hass good Christians and especial sons of the Holy Church!'
“Do you wish to entreat pardon for your great Reformer from a Council
of Bishops and Patriarchs, who, in the nineteenth century, are going to
meet for the purpose of condemning enlightenment in general and of pro-
claiming the infallibility of the Pope as a new article of faith ?

"You wish to clear the character of Huss, and see! by your projected
petition for the revision of the proceedings against him in a new Council of
Bishops, you are yourselves violating a chief article of his doctrine.
Magister John Hass, indeed, laid the greatest stress on this truth, which he
first enunciated in the chapel Bethlehem, that the Church is the assembly
of all believers, and that to that assembly alone it appertains to decide
infallibly about articles of faith. But you wish to betake yourselves to an
assembly of obscure ecclesiastical dignitaries, ascribing to them the right of
deciding matters which appertain to the judgment of the whole Church.

"We should therefore find ourselves, after four centuries and a half, just in the position of those who burned him at Constance. And that is not enough. A formerly victorious and heroic nation you want to make all at once into humble servants of the Romish hierarchy; you want the Bohemian nation, which for whole centuries was the only one in Europe that did not bend its neck beneath the sway of ambitious Rome, and which most steadfastly opposed her, all at once, in a time of enlightenment and universal emancipation from hierarchial rule, to surrender itself to the mercy of Ultramontanism, to disown its past history and to ask for absolution for the errors of its predecessors. We are to exchange our mighty past for the contempt of all enlightened people of the age in which we are living!

After having hitherto drawn our great strength in the struggle for the independent existence of our nation from the glorious times of the Bohemian Reformation, we are all at once to annihilate its significance ! Tohemian Reformation is to be crumpled up into a few insignificant articles of the defence of Huss at Constance, and the great Reformer is to be made The great to an obscure, insignificant priestly zealot, who was condemned only from personal feeling,' and is now to be accepted to mercy, as a pious ember of the Romish hierarchy!

"Do but leave that curse of the Council of Constance on the heads of dose who burnt him and on the heads of their present representatives. A Treat Reformer condemned by an assembly of bishops and prelates has greater significance in the history of human enlightenment than a est accepted to mercy by the selfsame Romish hierarchy."

ach

A. H. WRATISLAW.

1a

ide,

like

pose,

gainst

EVERY

VERY reader of Locke is aware of the importance which he attached to words. Half our errors, he said, more than half of our controversies, are owing to them. That sentence, adopted from him, has become a commonplace amongst English writers on ethics and psychology. One of Locke's most intelligent admirersthe one who was most a philologer by profession-Horne Tookesays that the "Essay on the Human Understanding" is a treatise on words.

It is startling, then, to read in Sir William Hamilton's "Lectures on Metaphysics" that Locke was of all writers the most careless in the use of words. No one, I suppose, ever suspected him of insincerity; he was indifferent to any opinions which did not affect practice. How, then, is it possible to accept the accusation of the illustrious Scotchman, which implies that he habitually set at nought his own warning? If we could refute it, we Britons of the south should delight to do so. But the evidence in favour of it is too strong. No one can read half a dozen pages of Locke without being struck by instances of words which he not only does not define, but which he resolves not to define; the meaning of which he takes for granted, and expects his readers to take for granted. He does not

fall by chance into a colloquial style; he adopts it by preference
when his subject seems specially to demand a severe and accurate
treatment.

Fully acknowledging this fact, I do not attribute it to any unwillingness in Locke to bind himself by the laws which he had imposed on others-not even to any forgetfulness of his own maxims. The mischiefs in the use of words to which he was most alive were those which had their origin in the schools. He had a painful recollection of Oxford; he did not believe in Logic; he had the dread which a physician of the new age felt for Aristotle, because he had held such dominion over the former age. He was involved in all the affairs of

his time; if he was more than a man of the world, he was that in the highest degree. It was his function to deliver men of the world from the notion that they were not as much interested in the facts and laws of the understanding as any who assumed a technical acquaintance with them. supposing that he was vindicating the simple, honest use of language He had the greatest excuse, therefore, for when he discarded the formalities of nomenclature, the strictness of definitions. Might not a provocatio ad populum be the best course for one who was denouncing innate ideas, and was asserting the worth of ordinary experience?

The appeal was successful. A plebiscite reversed the decrees of the schools. Locke was hailed even more as a deliverer from the dialecticians than from the champions of divine right.

A great reaction in favour of technical language, of formal definitions, has taken place in our days. It is not confined to one ethical or psychological faction; all have been affected by it. Mr. Mill, sincere admirer as he is of Locke, has done nearly as much to promote it as Hamilton, to whom he is in many respects so much It commenced, but only commenced, in the days of our fathers. opposed. Bentham and Coleridge, each for his own purposes, had denounced the looseness of the market phraseology, had tried to reproduce some of the scholastical distinctions. Each had incurred ridicule for that as much as for any of his departures from the accepted rubric. of his moral and puristical wisdom. And if Coleridge has won no Now Bentham's formulas are quoted as one of the conspicuous signs other recognition from public opinion, a complaint which he uttered less than fifty years ago-that the words "objective and subjective ›› had disappeared from our vocabulary-has met with

so

extraordinary

a response, that one hails with surprise and delight any article in a in which they do not occur half-a-dozen times. That writers like review or newspaper, any schoolboy theme, any theological tirade, were alike in appealing to common instincts either for or Hume and Reid, who, different as they were in genius and in purpose,

against