SPECTATOR'S LIBRARY.

Hurroar, The Reformation and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia. From the German. In two

volumes Lioniston and Stoneman. Ma'am,

Letters from the Bye-Ways of Italy. By Mrs. Henry Stisted. With Illustrations

by Colonel Stisted Murray.

MISCELLANEOUS LITERATURE,

Stories from the Italian Poets ; with Lives of the Writers. By Leigh Hunt. In two

volumes. Chapman and Hall.

FICTION,

The Cricket on the Hearth; a Fairy Tale of Home. By Charles Dickens.

Bradbury and Erans.

THE REFORMATION AND ANTI-REFORMATION IN BOHEMIA.

Tan religious, and perhaps the civil history of Bohemia, is that of a limb, not a figure ; the civil history being sunk in that of the German Empire, the religious contained in the general narrative of the Reformation and the wars to which it gave rise. The only time when Bohemia might be said to emerge as an independent nation was about 1618. The first action of this drama gave promise of the rest : it consisted in the well- known incident of the " States " of Bohemia throwing Slawota and Marti- nez, two of the Emperor's "Governors," out of the window of the palace of Prague. The next step was to declare their independence of the Emperor, by electing Frederick Count Palatine as their King. This event connects Bohemia with English history : as Frederick married Elizabeth, the daughter of James the First ; was the father of Prince Rupert ; and the war of the Palatinate was the contest so popular with the English people, and so neglected by the Sovereign. The then force of Great Britain, pro- perly applied, might have sustained Frederick on his throne : to have recovered it was a more doubtful matter : he and his subjects were quite incapable of resisting the Empire. Whatever the resources might have been, there was neither administrative capacity nor military skill, and scarcely knightly courage. The battle of the White Hill decided the fate of Bohemia ; for though the forces of the " States " were still sufficient to have waged a Fabian war, the King and his Generals ran away from the troops, and the terrified citizens of Prague clamoured for a surrender. Thus terminated Bohemia's independent existence ; and though her sufferings by no means ended with the downfall of Frederick, they henceforth belonged to the Thirty Years War, when the Reformation in Bohemia was virtually crushed.

The true religious history of Bohemia, however, is really prior to the Reformation. The country early showed a disposition to oppose the Papal corruptions ; the Moravians originated in Bohemia ; she lent a fa- vourable ear to the doctrines of Wicliffe, and in Jerome of Prague she furnished a second great martyr to the cause of religious freedom. Her early zeal or opposition gave rise to the peculiar sect of the Calixtines, or Utragues. These religionists were Roman in doctrine and in submis- sion to the Pope ; but they insisted on the cup for the laity, they ob- jected to the celibacy of the priesthood, the service in a foreign tongue, and other matters. Permission for the clergy to marry they temporarily obtained, in an irregular manner; but the cup was formally ceded; and gave rise to a sect of Bohemian Romanists, at times as powerful as the purer Papists, but, as might be suspected, disposed to fluctuate back- wards and forwards from the Pope to Luther.

• A subject of this nature which is rather an episode than a history, requires a treatment peculiarly skilful. The religious gropings of Bohe- mia before the Reformation might be displayed at as great a length as the materials admit; for it is curious to trace in Germany the early and wide- spread dissatisfaction with Rome, and see how ready was the mine for the application of Luther's match. The growth and establishment of the Calixtines would require a briefer treatment ; for though the question at bottom really involves the essence at issue between Rome and reason— the spiritual superiority of a priest by miraculous virtue of ordination— the Bohemians only contended for the sign, and were ignorant of the thing signified. The rest of the Bohemian religious narrative merely in- volvea the common Germanic story of the struggles of the Reformers with the Romanists, and of the persecutions which each party had to suffer when their opponents obtained the ascendancy. Closely mixed up, no doubt, with these matters, were the civil contests of Bohemia with the Emperor ; but they are too purely local to inspire much interest in the minds of distant readers, unless the hand of genius revived the past, and presented the old social condition of Germany as it appeared in reality, not merely "in its habit as it lived," but with its body and soul.

Who the German writer is from whom this account of The Rtforma- tion and Anti-Reformation in Bohemia is translated, does not appear. From internal evidence, he would seem to be some Bohemian Protestant, or some Moravian, whose personal and provincial feelings have ascribed to the subject a greater largeness and interest than it really possesses. Inspired by this false feeling, he pored over contemporary publications, and groped among documents in the libraries at Dresden, Giirlitz, and the establishment of the United Brethren at Herrnhut ; but he lacks the ge- nius to turn his industry to account. He has not penetrated the marrow of his authorities ; he has not presented the best of the authorities them- selves, (which would not, seemingly, be doing much) ; but he has taken fragments from them, which he strings together without much connexion either of subject or chronology. Hence, the book for the most part is a wearisome hodgepodge, presenting no whole, and not indeed containing one—a chronicle in spirit, without the earnestness or order of the chro- nicler. A more unreadable affair we hardly ever encountered. These points alone seem to be pretty well brought out,—that the Imperial per- secutions were often provoked by the excesses of the Protestants ; that a large body of the more learned and respectable Romanists were averse to persecution and violence ; and that the atrocities which took place ori- ginated with subordinates, and were mostly unknown to or disapproved by the Emperor and Ids higher officers. Sometimes, too, the book has

passages of a quaint kind of interest in quotations from the old writers ; aadt as these.

A POPE'S REASON FOR LATIN SERVICE.

With regard to the first of these, though certain Bohemian delegates obtained, in 977, a temporary permission for the use of the liturgy in the Sclavonio lan- guage, it was soon afterwards resolved by Rome that the vulgar tongue should be expelled from the churches. An order to that effect by Pope Gregory VII., in the year 1079, is still extant, in which he asserts, that "it is the pleasure of Almighty God that Divine worship should be held in a private language, though all do not understand it. For were the singing general and loud, the language might easily fall into contempt and disgust."

QUESTIONS OF THE CUP.

The questions which Ferdinand [L] desired to be answered are interesting even now, as showing the great importance which was attached to the outward form of the mere vessels, and the minute ceremonies which the Church had su- pemdded since the original institution of that simple though solemn Chris tan rite.

The following have reference to certain precautions in the general distribution of the wine. "1. How large are the cups and vessels out of which the second form is handed to the people? Are they so formed, as that none can be spilt through neglect or accident? 2. How are those cups formed in which the sacra ment is carried to the sick, in the towns and villages, in the country, over hills and dales, in summer and winter? Is there no danger of spilling a part? 3. How is the wine usually preserved, that it should not turn sour in summer and become frozen in winter? 4. In ease of necessity is it consecrated as well as the mass? 5. What is done if the wine happen to be insufficient for the number of communicants ? Is it increased by adding some unconsecrated wine? Or, in case of few communicants, what becomes of the wine that is left? 6. How, and how often, are the holy vessels cleaned? 7. How do the people receive the com- munion when there is but one priest? Does each communicant receive both forms successively; or do the whole receive the bread first and afterwards the wine?"

PROTESTANT PERSECUTIONS.

Two years afterwards, the hands of Protestants were again imbrued in blood, by the torture and death of John Sarkander, the Catholic Dean of Holesehan. He was from Silesia, studied theology and philosophy, and became an honest and zealous minister. When the Moravian States had declared themselves against Ferdinand, and he had sent Cossacks into their country, the Moravians thought that Ladislaw Popel Lobkowitz was the cause of it: whereupon they wanted to extort his confession from Sarkander, who was his confessor; and they chose the rack for the purpose. He was dragged to Ohniitz, and there treated as a cri- minal. They hung him up by his hands, his arms being bound behind, and at- tached weights to his feet. This was on the 13th February. Four days after they tormented him again for the space of two hours. On the 18th, the tor- mentors came to him intoxicated, and Hartman Bucheim had him burned with torches; but as he would make no confession, the executioner threw them away. Then Stiebor Ziemowsky and Benedict Pruscha commanded that his breast, belly, sides, and lips should be burned with pitch, resin' brimstone, and pens dipped in oil, until the intestines could scarcely be kept together. This lasted three hours, and they declared that it was only by the 'Devil's help he could en- dure it. He lingered four weeks in a dungeon, in excruciating pain. On the 17th March he died; and the Lutheran Alderman would only allow him to be buried at the foot of the gallows.