would have been some audacity in the stroke; but that fact seems decisive as to its necessity. If the national light is now flickering in its socket, where will it be twenty-five years hence, if the interval is employed in the deportation of the patriotic, the corruption of the nobles, and the relief of the serfs? Poland will then, in good truth, be "a menace to Germany," and Russia may find rich consolation for the loss of a navy, in having troops at Vienna ready to meet her on the Bosphorus when she marches to it through the rich provinces of Asia Minor. The greater risk has been run, in order to avoid the less. The make-shift policy has been followed. The smallest possible sacrifice of vested interests has been preferred to the righting of great wrongs, and the removal of pressing dangers; and that too when (humanly speaking) the last opportunity was presented. Why is all this? Is it only owing to the difficulties of the French Emperor? If it be so, a large share of our own responsibility is removed; but his calculations must have been largely affected by the spirit in which English ministers have looked at public affairs. Their words and their acts (not now only, but in the year 1848, when the game was much more in our hands than it is now) persuade us that they have been actuated by that baneful system of motives summed up in the polite phrase, "consideration for the situation of Austria." The worst conservatism-the conservatism of abuses and of shams; the worst policy-the policy of the ostrich when it hides its head in the sand; the worst morality-the morality which seeks to cheat the devil in the dark; the worst caution-the caution which ever turns the eye of mistrust and jealousy to the upright and generous side; every form of political cowardice, faithlessness, and hollowness, is implied in that fatal Austrian leaning which disfigures our whole policy. There are elements of barbaric grandeur in Russia, and universal empire is, after all, a regal dream; but Austria's prayer is but to be let alone, to work evil, to destroy freedom, to corrupt public virtue, to fetter thought, to enslave conscience, and to maintain an uneasy supremacy by fomenting the discords of her own wretched subjects, pitting one against another, and, if need be, setting each to slaughter his neighbour. Labra movet, metuens audiri: Pulchra Laverna, That this is an Austrian peace, concocted by Austria, promoted by Austria, to be followed by a closer alliance between Austria and France, is enough in itself to awaken every suspicion of its real adequacy. The world can hardly see a more anomalous and mischievous position than that now occupied by Austria. Her aspects are so multifarious, the elements of her strength and her weakness are so complex, that the only thing which can at all times be safely predicated of her is, that she may at any time be convulsed and rendered dependent. At the same time, her weakness cannot be reckoned on. Her opportunities of throwing a weight into the political scales are far too great to be intrusted to a nation presenting no moral guarantees for independence. Every state whose mission it is to hold keys and to maintain limits (SavoyPiedmont, in the wars of the seventeenth century, forms a notable instance) is open to bribery on the right hand and on the left, and must be expected to temporise and vacillate, promoting the interest now of one of its neighbours, now of the other. But however unfavourable such conditions of existence may be to the minor political morals of the boundary-state itself, they are attended with comparatively little danger to the commonwealth of nations in general, where, as in the case of Savoy and Piedmont at the period to which we refer, that state is at one within itself, able to defend itself, and not able to bring vast forces into the field on any side. It is required of it that it maintain a certain stedfast isolation amid its ever-changing alliances, and be prepared to dare all and to risk all when its own nationality is at stake. To this end it must be essentially military; and it follows that if compact and military, it must also be small, or it would cease to be a mere boundary-state, and would take its place among the great powers. But Austria has not these characteristics. She is a fallen great power. She is talked of as a boundary-state,—a state limiting its ambition to self-defence, because her independence is endangered by internal decay. She can within certain limits still act on a great scale, show an imperial front, and affect the likeness of a kingly crown. Such a part she will not resign while she has a neighbouring, a sympathising, and a powerful ally, able and willing to hide the patches in her purple, and to support her while he uses her. It is our firm conviction that Austria has been for years, and will continue to be, the tool of Russia; and that while England follows in the wake of Austrian diplomacy there will be no safety for Europe. Austria is no longer an empire of the first class, and she has not one of the qualities necessary in a mere boundary-state. Two topics will be urged in opposition to this view. First, it is said that Austria has repeatedly shown an unexpected vitality, and more particularly in her last great crisis. We apprehend that these appearances are illusory. There never was a time when there was a more general opinion than now that Austria cannot keep Lombardy for ever; and it was only in Lombardy that she re-subjugated a conquered population by her own strength. The chances of conciliation are even more precarious than those of repression. But little augury for the future can be drawn from any present tranquillity in Hungary. Nationalities are long in dying, and the great kingdom of Hungary, with its wealth, its warlike population, its language and its literature, would in any case require generations to assimilate it with the Duchy of Austria. The weariness of a vanquished people, the enforced good behaviour of masters who have conquered by foreign aid, may give a long interval of peace. There was a long peace in Italy in the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, what Carlyle calls the "organic filaments" of freedom are alive. Galileo may make a formal retractation of his doctrines; but he laughs in his sleeve as he taps his foot upon the earth and whispers, "It moves for all that." The quiet expansion and contraction of unseen iron-girders will loosen the masonry of the strongest buildings. With the present rapid diffusion of mental activity and political information, we find it difficult to believe that Austria is firmly seated on her Hungarian any more than on her Italian throne. She will want extraneous help yet. But then it is said (and very confidently) that Austria has an intense hatred and dread of the subjugators of Hungary, that she feels the humiliation of such aid, and will take care to be independent of it in future. We share no such confidence. It is not in the power of the Court of Vienna to be independent. It was not the empire which was obliged and humiliated; the empire was subdued. The fatal favour was not the reduction of an insurgent province, but the salvation of the house of Hapsburg when the total dissolution of its power was imminent. As long as that house keeps any hold on its dominions, it must ward off dissolution at any price and with any assistance. Our wishes that it may even now seek safety in the attachment of its own subjects are stronger than our hopes. We, on our side, have our scepticisms, and among them is an incapacity to anticipate the repentance of the Hapsburgs. It will be asked whether it is better that Austria, supposing her to be necessarily dependent, should be taught to rely rather on France than on Russia. That the realms at present cursed with her sway should be liable to be trodden by the armies of either is a great evil; but we think that there is much less danfrom France than from the aggressive suzerainty of Russia. Besides the brotherhood in legitimacy and the steady policy of Russia, it seems likely to be easier to secure a European combination against France than against Russia. Russia herself will always retain power enough in the East to keep France in check ger by her rivalry; and the weakness of Austria is in the East, not in the West. It is difficult to imagine France exercising the insidious protection over Austria which we know to be easy for Russia. It is certain that she has no hold over the subjects of Austria like that which Russia possesses as the champion of the Slavonic race. We cannot see that the peace now under discussion will materially diminish the permanent dangers to be apprehended from Russia. We have assumed throughout that it will be a good peace according to its professions. Our space will not allow an investigation of its basis. We believe that the main points involved in it are very generally understood, and we do not apprehend that our diplomatists will be remiss in dealing with them. We cannot suppose, for instance, that so evident an evasion as the permission to make naval arsenals at Nicolaieff, or elsewhere on the estuaries of the Black Sea, while they are prohibited on the coast of the Black Sea itself, will be listened to for a moment. About one matter it is natural to feel more anxiety, both from its importance, and from the sinister influence which Austria is too likely to exercise in respect to it: we mean the future constitution of the Danubian Principalities. If they are rendered really strong and independent, and to make them so the wishes of the population must be consulted in good faith, something in the right direction will have been done which we must except from the general tenor of our remarks. If there is a failure here, Austria will indeed have had her perfect work. We trust that the late rumour of an intention to leave this matter to future arrangement, as of secondary moment, is unfounded, and that it will not be left to accident and Austria to settle whether her creature Stirbey is to be in power or not, and whether the Principalities are to be united or not. ART. IX.-MEDIATORIAL RELIGION. The Nature of the Atonement, and its relation to Remission of Sins and Eternal Life. By John M'Leod Campbell. Cambridge, Macmillan and Co. 1856. THIS is a strange book. A Greek would have hated it. A Puritan would have found it savoury, even where it was unsound. Rosenkranz, who has written on the Esthetik des Hässlichen, would have been thankful for such a fund of illustration. Cumbrous, tiresome, monotonous, it has few attractions for the natural man, who may have a weakness in favour of pure English and nice grammar. It despises the graces of carnal literature, and treats all the colour and music of language as the roundheads treated a cathedral, silencing the "box of whistles" and smashing the "mighty big angels in glass." And yet, if you can get over its grating way of delivering itself, you will find it no barbaric product, but the utterance of a deep and practised thinker, charged with the richest experiences of the Christian life, and resolute to clear them from every tangle of fiction or pretence. Beneath the uncouth form there is not only severe truth, but great tenderness and beauty,-a fine apprehension of the real inner strife of tempted men, and an intense faith in an open way of escape from it, without compromise of any sanctity. The author, though not tuneful in his speech, has the gifts of a true prophet; and often enables one to fancy what Isaiah might have been if he had heard nothing but the bagpipe, and had set his "burdens" to its drone. Whether Mr. Campbell's style has been formed north of the Tweed, we know not. In any case it is trained in the school of Calvinism; is untouched therefore by any feeling for art; and runs on with a sort of extemporaneous habit, insufficiently relieved by occasional flashes of grotesque and forcible expression. It is only in exterior aspect, however, that he presents the features of the rugged old Calvinism and though the first-born of that system and its younger sons are distinguished like Isaac's children, "Esau is a hairy man, and Jacob is a smooth man," yet no true patriarch of the school can be so blind as not to see beneath our author's goatskin dress, and know that he is other than the heir. In fact, the peculiarity of this work as a theological phenomenon is, that it is a destruction of Calvinism without any revolt from it,—an escape from it through its own interior. Its postulates are not denied. Its phraseology is not rejected. Its statement of the problem of redemption is in the main accepted. Its provision for the solution, the Incarnation of the Son,-is sacredly preserved. Yet these elements are put into such play as to make it check-mate itself on its own area. Its definitions are shown to be suicidal; and its sharp-edged logic is used to cut through the ligaments that constrain and shape it. We have spoken first of the style of this book, because it strikes the reader at the outset, and is not unlikely to repel him if he is not warned. Of one other feature, derived from the same school, we must say a word, to qualify the admiration and gratitude which we shall then ungrudgingly tender to the author. In common with all the great masters of the "evangelical” school, he is too much at home with the Divine economy; knows too well how the same thing appears from the finite and |