NEW PUBLICATIONS RECEIVED.

Over Population and its Remedy; or an Inquiry into the Extent and Causes of the Distress prevailing among the Laboring Classes of the British Islands, and into the Means of remedying it. By William Thomas Thornton. London: Longmans. 1846. 8vo. pp. 446.

A Greek Grammar, for the Use of Schools and Colleges. By E. A. Sophocles, A. M. A new Edition. Hartford: H. Huntington. 1847, 12mo. pp. 324.

Poems, by George H. Calvert. Boston: W. D. Ticknor & Co. 1847. 16mo. pp. 125.

The History of Sunday Schools, and of Religious Education, from the Earliest Times. By Lewis G. Pray. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1847. 16mo. pp. 262.

Morning and Evening Meditations, for every Day in a Month. Boston: Crosby & Nichols. 1847. 16mo. pp. 294.

A Manual of the Principles and Practice of Road-making, comprising the Location, Instruction, and Improvement of Roads (Common, Macadam, Paved, Plank, etc.) and Railroads. By W. Gillespie, A. M., C. E., Professor of Civil Engineering in Union College. New York: A. S. Barnes & Co. 1847. 8vo. pp. 336.

Free Thoughts on Protestant Matters. By the Rev. T. D. Gregg, M. A. Second Edition. Dublin: W. Curry & Co. 1847. 12mo. PP. 452.

Life and Correspondence of Joseph Reed, Military Secretary of Washington at Cambridge, Adjutant-General of the Continental Army, Member of the Congress of the United States, and President of the Executive Council of the State of Pennsylvania. By his Grandson, William B. Reed. Philadelphia: Lindsay & Blakiston. 1847. 2 vols. 8vo.

The Evidence of the Genuineness of the Gospels. By Andrews Norton. Volume I. Second Edition. Cambridge: John Owen. 1846. 8vo. pp. 261 and cclxxvii. Additions made in the Second Edition of the First Volume of Norton's Evidences, printed separately. Cambridge: John Owen. 1846. 8vo. pp. 52.

Literary Studies, a Collection of Miscellaneous Essays. By W. A. Jones. Vol. I. New York: Edward Walker. 1847. 12mo. pp.

160.

The Massachusetts State Record and Year Book of General Information for 1847. Boston: James French. 1847. 12mo. pp. 280. A Blind Man's Offering. By B. B. Bowen. Boston: Published by the Author. 1847. 12mo. pp. 432.

Fifteenth Annual Report of the Trustees of the Perkins Institution

and Massachusetts Asylum for the Blind to the Corporation. Cambridge: Metcalf & Co. 1847. 8vo. pp. 55.

Valedictory Address to the Graduates of Geneva Medical College, January 26, 1847. By Charles Alfred Lee, A. M., M. D., Professor of General Pathology. New York: S. W. Benedict. 1847. 8vo. pp. 23.

Egri Somnia, Recreations of a Sick Room; and Vacant Hours, a Sequel to Recreations of a Sick Room. By Ezekiel Bacon. Utica. 1845. 16mo. pp. 107 and 61.

Four Essays Reprinted: The Science of Political Economy, Political Economy and Industry and their Relations, Impolicy of Protective Duties, and The Position of the Friends of the High Tariff examined. Philadelphia King & Baird. 1847. 8vo. pp. 47.

A Sermon of the Dangerous Classes in Society, preached at the Melodeon, January 31. By Theodore Parker, Minister of the 28th Congregational Church in Boston. Boston: C. & J. M. Spear. 1847. PP. 48.

8vo.

The American Drawing Book, a Manual for the Amateur, and a Basis of Study for the Professional Artist, especially adapted to the Use of Public and Private Schools, as well as Home Instruction. By J. G. Chapman, N. A. New York: J. S. Redfield. 1847. 4to.

Drawing Copy Book, accessory to Chapman's American Drawing Book. No. I. Primary and Elementary. New York: J. S. Redfield.

1847. 4to.

White Slavery in the Barbary States: a Lecture before the Boston Mercantile Library Association, February 17th, 1847. By Charles Sumner. Boston: W. D. Ticknor & Co. 1847. 8vo. pp. 60.

NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW.

No. CXXXVII.

OCTOBER, 1847.

ART. I.-1. The Reformers before the Reformation. The Fifteenth Century., John Huss and the Council of Constance. By EMILE DE BONNECHOSE. Translated from the French, by CAMPBELL MACKENZIE, B. A. Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co. 1844. 2 vols. 8vo. 2. Letters of John Huss, written during his Exile and Imprisonment, with Martin Luther's Preface, and a General View of the Works of Huss. By EMILE DE BONNECHOSE. Translated by CAMPBELL MACKENZIE, B. A. Edinburgh: William Whyte & Co. 1846. 8vo.

3. Johann Hussens Leben. Ein Lesebuch für den Bürger. Leipzig.

1804.

THE causes of every great revolution in politics or religion are easily stated in general terms. But when an inquirer goes farther, and seeks to measure the exact proportions of the several elements, he undertakes a very difficult, if not an idle, task. We can no more calculate, for instance, a ratio between the positive and negative forces which produced the Reformation, or cast to a fraction the balance between the abuses of the church and the character of Luther, than we can settle the point of precedence between a pestle and a mortar, or determine the comparative ability of a sharp sword and a stout arm to inflict a severe wound. The difficulty is hardly lessened when we confine ourselves to one of these forces, that is, to the character of Luther. Here, too, a question at once arises, how far his opinions VOL. LXV. No. 137.

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were original, and how far derived from the "Reformers before the Reformation." That he was in some degree their debtor, consciously or unconsciously, cannot be denied ; but we can never know the precise amount of the obligation. Every one borrows, steals, contracts, or inhales a large part of his opinions; but that man must be well versed indeed in the genealogy and chronology of his own ideas, who can detect the origin of those which he has held so long that they fearlessly strut about in the old clothes of instinct. If he cannot do this in his own case, how can he expect to succeed better with his neighbours, and above all, with historical characters, for his information about whom he is largely beholden to ignorant and prejudiced witnesses; unless, indeed, he resorts to that universal solvent of intractable facts, an historical theory? He may take refuge, for instance, in a peculiar metempsychosis, and make every great mind the product of a fortuitous concourse of individual attributes, which, once set free from their original combinations, wander about seeking new affinities, and at length become consolidated into new natures. When, for instance, in the course of human events, the world became ripe for a reformer, certain vagrant atoms, it seems, of Wycliffe, and Huss, and Savonarola, and Wessel might be spiritually discerned on St. Martin's day, wending their way to Eisleben, to the low-roofed house of Hans and Gretha Luther, to become the constituents of a new-born babe. If, however, our inquirer sees more in greatness than a form of colonization, he may adopt the theory of development which teaches that some of Nature's journeymen made the preLutheran Reformers, or at best that Nature herself tried her 'prentice hand on them, and, only after producing a series of gradually improving results, sent Luther at last full-grown into the world.

We do not mean, in these remarks, to deny the possibility of tracing in each attempt at a reformation some effects of previous efforts. No one can doubt that Huss was a disciple, though not a slavish one, of Wycliffe, or that the condition of society and letters at the beginning of the sixteenth century had been in some measure prepared by successive insurrections against the church of Rome. But we contend, that in such inquiries we soon reach the limits of certainty. So imperfect are all historical notices of the

habits of thought and action among the common people two or three centuries ago, that it is almost vain to hope for any clear perception of them. So uncertain, too, must the transmission of thought from one mind to another always be, that we can never confidently assert of a great man how far he was an effect, and where he began to be an independent cause.

These reflections, as it seems to us, point to the true place and value in history of the early projects of reform, and consequently of the various crises which the Roman church experienced before the Reformation. Without insisting on them as so many causes, productive of other similar movements or periods, they are best treated as parallel effects, attributable to common or cognate forces, and therefore strongly illustrative of each other. Instead of being regarded as fires caught from one another, they are more justly compared to the eruptions of a group of volcanoes, like Etna, Stromboli, and Vesuvius, which do not, at least so far as we know, cause each other, but yet point to a common source.

Of these remote struggles, none is more interesting than the Hussite movement; and of the crises of the church, none was more vital than that of the great Schism of the West, which began only five years after the birth of Huss, and could not be extinguished without his martyrdom. The life of Huss, therefore, and the history of the Schism are intimately connected with each other. The former, though short in its duration, and spent for the most part in the remote kingdom of Bohemia, is important and interesting both in a biographical and historical point of view. Though from him we have few stout, blunt speeches, such as Luther has bequeathed, and though no kind hand has gathered up the table-talk of a man who, not having dared to become a husband and a father, never had a domestic board, yet enough has been gleaned from the past to rescue his name from the oblivion which has nearly overtaken many other forerunners of the great Reformer. His cruel death is, of itself, a lasting title to remembrance and sympathy. Unsatisfactory as our sources of information in reference to Huss are, in too many respects, his history is far more attractive than that of his great teacher, Wycliffe, whose biography is so barren of personal incidents, that one often longs for a drop of human nature to mix with the dust of theology.

Before entering on our proper subject, the life of Huss, it