beyond the power of man, we may assert that he has succeeded far beyond all reasonable expectation. His broad effects are of course matter of history, for we know how well the different classes of Frenchmen came out, under the terrible ordeal they invited. But no knowledge of the history of the times, no information obtained from eye-witnesses, not even the closest personal observation,-nothing short of long and careful study of character, ripe experience, and a most familiar acquaintance with the recesses of the human mind-could have enabled him to make his various personages exhibit themselves, so as to leave us with so vivid an impression of their reality. It is a gloomy picture, and yet the artist's genial views of humanity relieve it with touches of pleasing colour. The loftier natures are ennobled by their trials and, at least for the time, they grow purer and better. Even those of the baser sort break out in occasional flashes that show a capacity for better things, or else they can plead something in extenuation of their follies or their crimes. Victor De Mauléon forgets his intrigues for a dynasty in taking thoughts for his country, De Rochebriant leaves his betrothed bride to take service in the ranks, Enguerrand de Vandemar dies the death of a hero. His brother Raoul becomes a saint on earth, as he seeks out the suffering in the dens of the city or tends the wounded among the falling shells on the battle-field. No less true to their natures are the Epicureans. Each of them exhibits in his peculiar way the ardour of his attachment to his country, while consoling himself under his personal privations with a courageous gaiety that is painfully ghastly. Nothing can be better than Lemercier, emaciated with privations, playfully describing his service on the ramparts as captain of the National Guard; than Savarin and De Brézé haunting like idle ghosts the scenes of their former bustling happiness, greeting with sad smiles and hollow laughter the melancholy jokes the sad situation inspires them with. In contrast to sardonic philosophers like these, we have the women kneeling in the churches, seeking for the strength that prepares them for pious endurance. The good-humoured, loving bourgeoise, Madame Rameau, is almost as engaging in her way as Isaura: there is great truth to Parisian nature in the toleration that she, a spotless spouse, expresses for her son's liaison with Julie. While among those whose errors predestine them to retributive punishment, we have Gustave Rameau and Armand Monnier, gliding steadily down the fatal slope into the pit of destruction they have done their best to dig.

We have little or nothing left to add, except that as the

results of fine observation and delicate feeling are scattered broadcast through the volumes, The Parisians' is emphatically a book to be read carefully. While it fascinates the fancy, and carries you insensibly along on the smooth flow of its diction, it arrests attention and provokes thought. Genuinely French in the flavour, it is of no city or country in its broad experience and its knowledge of life. It would almost appear as if the accomplished author had some presentiment of his approaching end, and lavished with unsparing hand the stores he had been accumulating since early manhood; and of the many books he has written, there is none a dying author might regard with more complacency than The Parisians.' It is the happy climax to a series of fictions, which have conferred upon him a brilliant, and, we think, a lasting place in English literature.

ART. V.-Introduction to the Science of Religion. Four Lectures delivered at the Royal Institution, with two Essays on False Analogies, and the Philosophy of Mythology. By F. MAX MÜLLER, M.A. London: 1873.

MANY of our readers will remember the interest excited by

the announcement of these lectures. The well-known ability of the Professor, the charm of his style, his facility of illustration, his unrivalled linguistic attainments, were sufficient to justify the highest public expectation. But beyond this the very nature of the subject treated contributed to this result. An introduction under the guidance of the first comparative philologist of the age to a Science of Religion forms, it will readily be admitted, a programme of incomparable attraction. Three years have elapsed since the delivery of the course, which is now first published in a separate form with the additions and corrections of the author. Throughout the work his sincerity and candour of purpose are abundantly evidenced, as also his unshaken faith in the future of the science which he delineates.

'I feel certain,' he writes (p. 22), 'that the time will come when all that is now written on theology, whether from an ecclesiastical or philosophical point of view, will seem as antiquated, as strange, as unaccountable as the works of Vossius, Hemsterhuys, Valckenaer, and

The Lectures have been already translated into French and Italian; and a German version has just appeared at Strasburg, entitled 'Einleitung in die vergleichende Religionswissenschaft.'

VOL. CXXXIX. NO. CCLXXXIV.

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Lennep by the side of Bopp's Comparative Grammar. . . . The study of the ancient religions of mankind, if carried on in a bold but scholarlike, careful, and reverent spirit, will remove many doubts and difficulties which are due entirely to the narrowness of our religious horizon; it will enlarge our sympathies, it will raise our thoughts above the small controversies of the day, and at no distant future evoke in the heart of Christianity a fresh spirit and a new life.' * (P. ix.)

Quite recently Professor Müller has found a fresh opportunity of repeating these assurances and explaining the nature of his subject. In a Lecture on Missions, which he was invited to deliver on Dec. 3, 1873, in the Nave of Westminster Abbey, the following passage occurs :

'After a careful study of the origin and growth of these (historical) religions, and after a critical examination of the sacred books on which all of them profess to be founded, it has become possible to subject them all to a scientific classification in the same manner as languages, apparently unconnected and mutually unintelligible, have been scientifically arranged and classified; and by a comparison of those points which all of them share in common, as well as by a determination of those which are peculiar to each, a new science has been called into life, a science which concerns us all, and in which all who truly care for religion must sooner or later take their part-the Science of Religion.' (P. 26.)

It will be seen from these extracts that while the result aimed at by Mr. Müller is a scientific analysis of religion, and the method he employs for this end is comparative, it does not by any means consist in a simple enumeration of individual religions, of their tenets, rites, and ceremonial observances. Such an inquiry, though inductive in its bearings and full of interest, is too obvious to be novel, and has not hitherto proved fertile in results. The contradictory character of the notices as to religious belief to be gleaned from books of travel among savage races has often been remarked.† A deeper scientific conception is required before a comparative study of religion can be achieved.

In his Lectures on the Science of Language' Professor Müller has clearly made out the foundations of the study of Comparative Philology to have been first laid as early as the close of the sixteenth century. The glimmer of its dawn

* Luther displayed a similar enthusiasm when he compared the advancement of learning and its position towards revealed truth to that of John the Baptist as the precursor of the Gospel. (See Briefe, vol. ii. p. 313, ed. De Wette.)

† On this point there are some good observations in this work (p. 57). It is more fully pursued by Mr. Tylor in his admirable "History of Primitive Culture' (vol. i. ch. xi.).

may faintly be perceived in the appreciation of the similarities between Sanskrit and the languages of Europe shown by Filippo Sassetti, an Italian resident at Goa, about 1588. In later times Hegel called the discovery of the common origin of Greek and Sanskrit the discovery of a new world. The same resemblances had previously surprised the companions of Xavier, and seem to have led on in the course of little more than a century to the proposals of Leibnitz* and Berkeley to register comparative tables of words in different dialects, as also probably to the independent speculations of Dalgarno, Wilkins, and Jacob Bohm on the possibility of a universal language. It is observable that the desire for an acquaintance with the various religions existing in the world showed itself about the same time with the earliest observations on the similarities of remote languages; somewhat later perhaps, but it ran the same course. Some indeed have traced back a comparison of Christianity with the religions of the East as far as the thirteenth century. In the present work Professor Müller furnishes an interesting account of the Indian Emperor Akbar (1542–1605), who invited to his court Jews, Christians, Mohammedans, Brahmans, and Zoroastrians, and had as many of their sacred books as he could get access to translated for his own study. The result of the experiment, it may be added, was decidedly unfavourable to Mohammedanism. No doubt, as regards the scholars of Europe, the discovery of the New World, and the increased intercourse with India and the East after doubling the Cape of Good Hope, had a share in promoting such inquiries. For in recounting the habits and manners of strange and savage peoples, their religious customs would be the first to gain notice. In this manner these researches coincided with the inductive turn of thought and observation which marks the age of Bacon and Montaigne. In our own country the history of religions seems to have been first touched by Alexander Ross,† an obscure but pains

* How far the genius of Leibnitz had anticipated the method and results of comparative philology may be seen in the 'Nouveaux Essais,' L. III. ch. ii. Leibnitz, and it may be said, Plato, showed the possibility of a philosophical language, i.e. of one which should not grow but exist à priori. See Max Müller, 'Stratification of Language,' p. 3.

The title of his work was 'Пavoißeia: a View of all Religions in the World.' It was published at London in 1653, and was translated into Dutch, French, and German. Ross had previously brought out The Alcoran of Mahomet, translated out of Arabique into French, ' and newly Englished, &c. by A. R. 1649.' He also edited and continued Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World.'

taking compiler, whose voluminous commentaries gave point to the lines which Addison thought to be the best known in Hudibras:

'There was an ancient sage philosopher
That had read Alexander Ross over.'

In Germany Hofmann followed with his Umbra in luce: sive consensus et dissensus religionum profanarum,' published in 1680. In 1704 Jurieu brought out his 'Histoire critique des Dogmes et des Cultes depuis Adam jusqu'à Jésus Christ.' The religion or Theology of the Gentiles' had during the same period been variously treated by G. I. Voss, Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Witsius, and Van Dale. Grotius, Puffendorf, and in our own country Selden and Wollaston, were similarly engaged in tracing the principles of morality, jurisprudence, and natural religion inductively from the ideas and practices of heathen nations. The earlier half of the eighteenth century witnessed the production of Picart's curious and costly work on the Ceremonies and Customs of all nations, as well as Broughton's Dictionary of all Religions.' Out of such materials Bayle, Volney, Voltaire, and Hume generalised a system of the origin and development of Religion, professedly based on observation, yet in its results answering to nothing historically true, and identifying all positive forms of faith with priestcraft. Such a method could only prove as sterile as the attempt again and again made by philosophers to determine à priori the possible limits of our knowledge of Divine things anterior to Revelation; or to demonstrate by abstract reasoning the articles of the Christian faith. The true track was once more struck, however vaguely and aestheti cally, by Lessing in his well-known Education of Mankind,' and by Herder in his celebrated Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit.'† Lessing, it is true, really pursues an à priori view of the historical development of revealed and pagan religion; while Herder, preoccupied with a large idea, inclines to make the forms of humanity' results of

* Voltaire became in this matter the victim of a fraud. A forged Veda, the work of a Jesuit missionary, found its way to Europe from Pondicherry, and was used by him to extol the wisdom of the East at the expense of Christianity. See Von Bohlen, 'Das Alte Indien,' vol. i. p. 136.

The History of the World,' says Prof. Müller in his 'Essay on Comparative Mythology,'' has laid open new avenues of thought, and it has enriched our language with a word, which never passed the lips of Socrates, or Plato, or Aristotle-mankind.'