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General Remarks.

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commonly subside into general ideas, events into generalizations. He does not appear to think that persons and events have any value in themselves, apart from the principles they illustrate; and consequently, he conceives neither with sufficient intensity to bring out always the principles they really contain.” — Vol. 11. pp. 201-203.

As a critic of poetry, Mr. Whipple possesses a warmth of imagination, an affluence of fancy, and a generous sympathy with his author, which admirably fit him to be an interpreter of the glorious old bards of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of their more generally popular successors. His articles on the Poets and Poetry of America, the English Poets of the Nineteenth Century, and the Old English Dramatists, are full of genial criticism and choice extracts culled from their works. His remarks on Sprague, Longfellow, Campbell, Miss Barrett, Ben Jonson, Webster, Decker, and Marlowe "of the mighty line," are deserving of particular commendation. But, perhaps, the ablest articles in these volumes are those on Daniel Webster, Choate, and Sheridan, which are marked by a breadth of understanding, a strength of conception, and a keenness of analysis, that leave little to be desired, in forming an estimate of their consummate abilities as statesmen and orators. The articles on Sydney Smith, and South's Sermons, are also very pleasant and able essays. They abound in happily chosen extracts, and sparkle with wit drawn from those authors. The article. on James's Novels is a vigorous exposition of the weighty claims of that industrious bookmaker to a place among

"the few, the immortal names, That were not born to die."

The remaining articles all evince a high degree of merit ; but we need not speak of them particularly, since their character will be readily inferred from what has already been said. We cannot, however, take leave of Mr. Whipple's book without expressing our strong hope that he will still press forward in that noble career in which he has won so conspicuous a place. Already has he acquired a wide-spread reputation in this country. Let him still strive in the path he has chosen; for so shall he help to build up a truly American literature.

C. C. S.

[ART. III.-SAINT THERESA AND THE DEVOTEES OF

SPAIN.*

IN point of romantic incidents, striking characters, and significant movements, the sixteenth century yields to no other age since the Apostles. To present even a faint outline of its prominent events or persons would exhaust the limits of our article, instead of furnishing a brief introduction. It is enough, after thinking of that imposing array of princes, prelates, theologians, saints, martyrs, discoverers, heroes, to close our eyes to the historic page, and allow the various forms to arrange themselves in order as they will, and march in grand procession before the imagination. Far in the van, the precursors of the mighty host, appear Gutenberg and Columbus, leading on the future as with magical power, the one, by the mechanism that gives wings to thought, the other, by the discovery that startled the Old World from its complacent slumber, and opened a new hemisphere to its bold adventurers and in time to its independent thinkers. Preceded by such heralds, the host draws near, at first seeming a confused mass, but soon presenting three nearly distinct divisions. At the head of one walks the monk Luther, with all the stout Teutonic heart beating beneath his cassock, the modern Hermann against the modern Rome; at the head of another marches, with military step, the soldier-saint, Loyola, with the blood of Spain boiling in his veins, the new Cid of

1. Obras de la Gloriosa Madre Santa Teresa de Jesus, Fundadora de la Reforma de la Orden de Nuestra Señora del Cármen, de la Frimitiva Observancia. En Madrid. 1793. 2 vols. 4to.

Works of the Glorious Mother St. Theresa de Jesus, Founder of the Reformed Order of Our Lady of Carmel of the Primitive Rule.

2. Cartas de Santa Teresa de Jesus. Con Notas del Exc.mo y R.mo Sr. D. JUAN DE PALAFOX Y MENDOZA, Obispo de Osma, del Consejo de su Magestad. En Madrid. 1793. 4 vols. 4to.

Letters of St. Theresa de Jesus, with Notes by Palafox.

3. Euvres très-complètes de Sainte Thérèse; Des Euvres complètes de S. Pierre d'Alcantara, de S. Jean de la Croix, et du Bienheureux Jean d'Avila, formant ainsi un tout bien complet de la plus célèbre Ecole ascétique d'Espagne. Paris. 1840-1845. 4 vols. 4to.

Complete Works of St. Theresa, St. Peter of Alcantara, St. John of the Cross, and the Blessed John of Avila; forming thus a very complete Whole of the most noted Ascetic School of Spain. Translated by various hands and edited by Migne.

4. Vie de Sainte Terèse. Par F. Z. COLLOMBET. Lyon et Paris. 1844.

12mo.

Life of St. Theresa. By Collombet.

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Spanish History.

201

a new crusade. In the rear, and in the interval between' stands another company, led by the man of middle courses' the wavering Cranmer, backed by the bluff Henry, and guiding on England and her mighty future. Thus Germany heads the movement, Spain the reaction, whilst England aims for the middle ground. The end is not yet. Which of the three tendencies will finally prevail the historian must leave it to the prophet to decide.

*

We turn now to Spain as it was in the sixteenth century. She alone of the great powers of Europe shared but little in the spirit of the Reformation. Our common ecclesiastical historians have scarcely a word to say of her Protestant Reformers, whilst the voluminous Schroeckh dismisses the subject in a few passing paragraphs, narrating the murder of Diaz, the martyrdoms of Pontius, Gonsalve, Cazalla and his followers, and the imprisonment of the Canon of Seville, Foncius, and the Archbishop of Toledo, Carranza, two distinguished theologians whose association with Charles V. in his retirement led to the strange report that the monk-king himself inclined to the Lutheran doctrines in his last days. Yet the little of the reform spirit that appeared was soon suppressed by the Inquisition, and, in the opinion of Schroeckh, would hardly have appeared at all but for the connection established with Lutheran Germany by the imperial court.

Thus Spain, after the eventful interval of a thousand years, was faithful to the prestige with which she first appeared in the annals of Christendom. In the death of Priscillian, the Spanish soil was stained with the first blood shed by Christians for opinion's sake, and thus in the fourth century the bigot Idacius and the tyrant Evodius displayed traits which found fit imitators ages after in the Dominics and Torquemadas of the Inquisition. The Spaniard Theodosius carried to the imperial throne a spirit not unlike that of Charles V., and the great Council of Constantinople, held in his reign, may be named as a forerunner of that of Trent. Spain, too, furnished the prince who gave the fatal blow to Arianism, and the Goth Recared was a man of the reaction, like his terrible successor, Philip II., who reigned a thousand years after.

In some respects it seems unaccountable that Spain should be so far (by three centuries surely) behind the other nations

* Seit der Reformation, II. 791 - 800. VOL. XLVI.-4TH S. VOL. XI. NO. II.

18

of Europe. In the Middle Ages, her people were remarkably independent, and led a life as free as Scottish Highlanders. Yet the pressure of the Moors upon them for so many centuries tended to neutralize all religious differences, to unite them in a burning fanaticism against the Moslem, and thus prepare them to enter with all the unity of a single militant church upon the century in which Germany, France, England, and even Italy, were rent by hostile factions. With a strong sense of personal dignity in civil matters, the Spaniard became in respect to religion the slave of utter absolutism. Catholicism has wrought this paradox. "In the Middle Age an element of liberty, and since the sixteenth century an element of reaction, it has," says Quinet, "imprinted this double character upon the mind of Spain."

The leading characters of the Romish movement in Spain are not in danger of being neglected by modern historians. Ferdinand, Isabella, Ximenes, and Charles V. have been portrayed by more than one master-hand, whilst students of history now wait anxiously for the publication of a work on Philip II. from one whose name stands for ever identified with the annals of Spain.* It is our purpose now to deal with a leading spirit in the reaction, whose claims have been generally overlooked by Protestants, one who brought to the Roman see, not the aid of sword or dungeon, axe or fagot, but the fervor of a flaming piety and the sacrifice of a devoted life. We speak of her not unworthily named with Isabella, as wearing her mantle of zeal and power. To whom can we refer but to Theresa of Avila, honored by popes with the title of Doctor of the Church, and revered by devotees as the illuminated teacher and the elect exemplar of the life of prayer?

We pursue this subject with more than a general historic interest, not only on account of the genuine zeal and power of her life, but because she reflects so fully in her various works the spirit of the Catholicism of her time, and enables us to see clearly the good and the evil that are the legitimate fruits of the system which absorbed her whole soul. We cannot say that she was as wax beneath the seal of Rome, for she

* When are we to possess the work on Spanish Literature, so much needed and so long expected? The old pupils of Professor Ticknor can never forget his course of lectures. The mere outline or syllabus which we have preserved is a better guide to the student than Bouterwek or Sismondi.

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Works and Biographies.

203

had too much intrinsic vitality to be compared to any thing so passive. She was rather like the vine that climbs around the marble column, and in its growth takes its form from the stone to which it clings. We have never appreciated so fully the genius of Romanism as from the study given from time to time, for a year or two, to the pages of this saint of the flaming heart.

We have been guided chiefly by the work named third upon our list, Migne's four volumes upon Theresa and the ascetics of her school. We cannot say much in favor of the French Abbé's editorial fidelity, except so far as good proof-reading is concerned. Without any explanatory notes, without even naming the translators to whom he is indebted for the several versions, without giving us the literary history of the various editions before published, he has collected in one huge mass all that most nearly concerns the Saint and her associates. We had supposed that the Life by Villefore inserted here was a new production, untii we learned from another source that it was first printed in 1712. However, such omissions as we have noticed are easily supplied, and we are greatly indebted to Migne for bringing together so much valuable matter in so cheap and available a form, and with such correct printing. By comparing, as far as we are able, the French versions given by him with the Spanish originals named first and second on our list, we find, that, although the meaning is in general faithfully given, the style is much altered, often completely Frenchified, and the homely, unaffected, and often awkward sentences of the saint have been drilled into the dancing step of the French rhetoricians of the age of Louis XIV. The letters, in themselves more smooth and colloquial, are better rendered than the treatises. We will not try to name the various editions of her works since the first, which appeared in 1588, six years after her death. The most desirable is that of Madrid, 1793, of which the only copy in the country, as we are led to believe, is in Harvard College Library, and of this copy we have been able to avail ourselves. As to translations, they are numberless, especially in the French language; yet Collombet and his coadjutors think there is room for a still better version than any extant, and have devoted themselves to the labor. The English version by Abraham Woodhead (2 vols. 4to., 1669) we know only by name and by scattered quotations.

Of the nine or ten biographies of the Saint that have any