CURRENT LITERATURE.
The British Quarterly Review. April. (Hodder and Stoughton.)— The first and most interesting article in this number is on the life of Gaspard de Coligny; it refers to. and is, we should suppose, by the same hand that wrote an able article a little time ago on the causes a the failure of the French Reformation. The author knows the period well, and can form a just and candid estimate of character. Will not some one take up his very excellent suggestion and write a life of Coligny ?—a task, he says, never yet attempted in England. Why, indeed, should he not undertake it himself ? Next to this, we should place an essay full of knowledge of the subject and sympathetic feeling on " Livingstone's Last Journals." The writer remarks very well on the strange visions which the great explorer cherished in his later wanderings, that "every great discoverer is at heart an idealist. Columbus fed his strength for the discovery of the new world by the vision of the recovery of Jerusalem from the infidel." But why go on to hazard the assertion, "Every great Scotch- man is an idealist "? Was there ever a more surprising assertion? There is also a good article on the life and works of Bjornsterne Bjorn- son, the Norwegian novelist. In theology and politics, or perhaps we should say theological politics, we have "Mr. Gladstone's Retirement from the Liberal leadership" and " Illtramontanism and ivil Allegi- ance." In the former the writer well says that Mr. Gladstone was great as a legislator rather than as an administrator. We take leave to doubt the truth of his surmise that he feels that the path indicated by Mr. Bright,— i. e., the disestablishment of the English Church, —to be the only one on which the Liberal party can ad- vance." From tho latter we give a quotation which is worth weigh- ing from the Bull Uncon Sunctam The spiritual power insti- tutes the earthly, and decides whether it is well exercised If the earthly power errs, it is judged by the spiritual ; but if the spiritual err, it is judged by its own superior, by God alone Whereupon, to every human creature we declare, assert, define, and pronounce that it is entirely essential to salvation to be subject to the Pope of Rome." The number is made up by an essay on "Mr.Kinglake's Crimean War;" by one of much ability on "The Higher Pantheism," apropos of Mr. J. A. Picton's "Mystery of Matter ;" and by another, which hardly seems of sufficient importance for its place, about the authorship of a certain "Ode to the Cuckoo." Is it not a sign, by the way, of "drifting," when we find the representatives of orthodox Congregationalism saying of Livingstone, "He was fortunate enough in one village to disabuse their minds of rain-making prayers, a feat which is hardly accomplished in England yet ?" We looked at the cover, to see whether we had not got hold of the Westminster.
Previous page
