trades of shoemakers, tailors, or carpenters, or to engage as domestic servants with their fellow-citizens. The Germans, the Vaudois, and the Savoyards, are the Helotes who perform these offices. Watchmaking may be practised without degradation, and it used to employ nearly one-fourth of the population, women working at it as well as men; but the trade is now overstocked with workmen, and is on the decline. Hence the young men are obliged to emigrate, as they cannot all be artists, watch-makers, or professional men, and the num ber of marchands and négocians is necessarily limited in a city which is rather declining in population, and does not admit of increase, as there is no space for new houses within the walls.

Where the pretensions of pride mount high, and are associated with poverty, unaccompanied by distinguished merit, severe mortifica-" tion will be the frequent result, and this may lead to mental alienation and suicide.

In democratic republics, there is also an evil constantly in operation to goad and irritate the amour propre of the great mass of the citizens, nor has Geneva escaped its influence.

14 dn a government where the citizens are not distinguished by herê, ditary rank, it is difficult, if not impossible, to prevent the formation of an indefinite kind of aristocracy arising from wealth, combined with family antiquity; and this is ever more grating to the feelings of the inferior citizens than a titled aristocracy, because its rights are unacknowledged and undefined. This self-created aristocracy must make an unceasing effort to support its assumed dignity in society; those who are supposed to be a degree below them, silently resent the usurpation; but, at the same time, they make similar pretensions to superiority over those citizens whom they regard as one step lower down in the scale than themselves. Thus coldness; formality, and hauteur become habitual and general, and the seeds of internal and Tasting hatred are sown between families; and to this cause, more than to difference of political principles, many of the former dissensions in Geneva may be mainly attributed. History informs us, this was also the case in the ancient republics. A titled hereditary aristocracy, on the contrary, has its rights so well defined, and so generally acknowledged, that they excite no jealousy; and when these rights are modified, as in the English constitution, and are tempered by the possessor with intelligence and benevolence, they are almost invariably exercised with such courtesy, as to be an ornament, rather than a weight, to social intercourse.The British nobleman, who is truly respectable, will ever receive the voluntary tribute of deference and esteem, and may dispense with the laborious drudgery of constantly looking proud; whereas, with a self-created untitled aristocracy, this drudgery is the daily price paid for dignity, nor can it be so purchased, without taking with it a large portion of hatred, which greatly overbalances its value.

The prevailing information and sound sense of the Genevese gentlemen, are gradually softening down the irritation arising from the assumption of aristocratic distinction; but females in all countries yield up their pretensions to superiority in society with reluctance,

1

and are the more tenacious of distinction, in exact proportion to their ignorance of the grounds on which their claims to it are founded.' Bakewell, Vol. II. pp. 100-103.

We have no doubt that our Traveller has suggested the true explanation of the lamentable fact. Infidelity, though, as blunting the innate sense of accountableness, and cutting off the sources of consolation under sorrow, it may operate as an indirect cause, yet, presents no motive to self-destruction. The immediate cause of suicide must be sought for, therefore, in other circumstances; and that false shame which is connected, with pride of character and what is often termed German pride,' is, we believe, the cause of the larger proportion of suicides both in this country and in Germany.

1

Mr. Bakewell devotes a chapter to ecclesiastical matters ancient, and modern. Why our worthy Geologist should have thought it necessary, in a book of travels, to give us a history of the Republic and Church of Geneva, we cannot tell; but we could have wished, for his own sake, that he had left these matters alone. His chief object appears to be, to vent a certain portion of atrabilious feeling against the Genevese Reformer, and to hold up to ridicule M. Malan. He tells us that he should not have referred to the latter, but that the schism in the Church at Geneva has excited more attention with a 'certain party in this country, than at Geneva itself;' and we have complaints against certain over-zealous persons in that city, who wanted to obtain an evangelical clergyman for the English Chapel, but were defeated by the good sense of the Mr. Bakewell's "great majority of the English, residents.'

whole statement, we are compelled to say, is a gross misrepre sentation; not, we believe, a designed one, but arising out of misinformation received from his Genevese friends, added to his total ignorance of what Calvin taught or Calvinists believe. His attack on that great man is in the coarsest style of Socinian virulence. He speaks of the numerous victims sacrificed to appease his malignity, and represents the abandonment of the doctrines of the Reformation by the Genevese pastors, as consisting in their renouncing the doctrine of Infant Preterition and other peculiarities of the Calvinistic faith. All this is : very contemptible. Our readers will not, we trust, have quite forgotten the article which appeared in this Journal, some few years ago, on the Geneva Catechism," in which a history was given of the circumstances to which Mr. Bakewell has un

Eclectic Review. N.S., Vol. IX. (Jan. 1818.)

fairly and unwisely alluded. We can now only refer to that article. M. Simond has briefly noticed the Methodists,' and in a manner which shews him to be imperfectly informed on the subject of religion, but at the same time with equal candour and good-sense. The inconsistency of the conduct of the Genevese pastors in persecuting and expelling the separatists, has appeared to him in a very different light from what it does to Mr. Bakewell. A unity of doctrine in the same church,' he remarks, may be necessary; but Protestants have no right to prevent separate churches from being established, for they also were separatists, not only at the time of the Reformation, but also when, in the last century, they abandoned the rigorous principles of Calvin, and reformed the Reformation itself.' M. Simond's account of Calvin in bis historical sketch, is equally dispassionate. Mr. Bakewell chooses to affect to doubt whether the state of morals in Geneva was, at the era of the Reformation, so corrupt as it has been supposed.

The register of the council of Geneva,' says M. Simond, exhibits melancholy proofs of the profligacy prevailing at this period, which may serve to absolve the Reformers from the accusation of unreasonable severity: the reform of morals and the reform of religion could not be separated.'

Calvin's character is thus judiciously estimated.

Calvin did not long survive to enjoy his reputation, but being naturally of a weak constitution, and worn out by incessant labour, died prematurely at the age of 55. With vast powers of mind, and a prodigious memory, indefatigable, temperate, and disinterested, he obscured these rare qualities by a temper habitually severe and intolerant. Yet, in forming our judgment of men, we must consider the age they lived in, and it is probable that modes of reformation more strictly evangelical might have proved wholly unavailing with the contemporaries of Calvin. He came to Geneva a stranger, exposed to the hatred of parties, and by the mere force of character established an undisputed influence. Not less a legislator than a theologian, the people whom he had found corrupt and barbarous, without morals, religion, or public spirit, came out of his hands austere and simple, religious and patriotic, or at least received from him the impulse which made them so in the end.

The vain subtilties, scholastic affectation, and pedantry of the age, may be observed in the writings of Calvin and the other reformers; but these defects are far more conspicuous in those who came before them, and likewise after, that is, among the controvertists of the seventeenth century.

Calvin having declared war against the scholastic theology, was bound to avoid its characteristic defects. Melanchthon, Beze, Luther, Zuinglius, and some others, were not only men of great learning and transcendent talents, but of a very cultivated taste. Those

among them who wrote in the vulgar language for the sake of being generally understood, had to fit the rude and inartificial instrument to a new purpose, in adapting it to didactic subjects, as well as to eloquence and even poetry; while the Latin of those who wrote in the learned language of that time, Erasinus, Melanchthon, Mullinger, &c. formed on the best models of antiquity, is perfectly pure and elegant. Theodore de Beze, particularly, wrote Latin with surprising sweetness and harmony. Nothing can exceed the vigour and dignity of Calvin in his dedication to Francis I. of his Institutions of the Christian Religion. After his time, the Protestants, struggling for existence with the court of Rome, and the Jesuits, and most of the powers of Europe, lost much of the noble impulse given to them in the sixteenth century, and confined themselves to the narrow circle of po lemical theology.

When it was understood that the illness of Calvin must shortly prove fatal, the magistrates of Geneva, as also the ministers of the gospel, came in a body to receive the instructions of the dying man, and if possible to learn how to obtain a continuation of the blessings of Providence upon the republic. Farel, at the advanced age of eighty, came from Lausanne to be present on the occasion. Calvin chose to partake of the meal prepared for them, and being carried into the room where they were assembled, blessed the food, ate a little, conversed with them, and was taken back to his bed. Among his parting words, we find this singular observation about himself, "I was naturally timid, but by the help of God," &c. In his person he was not above the middle stature, thin and pale, of a dark com plexion, and with bright and penetrating eyes. His habits were frugal and simple. A few personal effects, chiefly books, to the value of about 125 gold crowns, were all the property he left behind him. He ate once a day, and slept very little affairs of state and of religion, with a consequently extensive correspondence, scarcely leaving him the time necessary for repose. Yet though his latter years were embittered by disease in many of her most trying forms, gout, stone, head ache, spitting of blood, and the frequent return of intermittent fever, he never relaxed from his pursuits, and never uttered a complaint. being only sometimes heard to say, lifting his eyes to heaven when in great pain, Jusques à quand, Seigneur ?

Simond, Vol. II. pp. 344-347.

Although our extracts from these very interesting volumes have already been so copious, we must make room for the following picture-we fear no overcharged representationof our English absentees at Geneva.

The people of Geneva are generally well disposed in favour of the English. The religion they profess, the government under which they live, the moral habits peculiar to their respective countries, present many points of contact and pledges of union; to all which, we may add, that they are not immediate neighbours-a necessary condition, it seems, to friendly feelings between nations.

Formerly a great number of English received a part of their education at Geneva, and formed connexions of friendship which lasted their whole lives. Many more Genevans went over to England in pursuit of wealth or science; most people of education amongst them understood English." Les Genevois," said Bonaparte, who did not like them, parlent trop bien Anglois pour moi !"

Who would not have supposed that when, after a separation of twenty or twenty-five years, the English again appeared among the Genevans, they would have been the best friends in the world? Yet it is not so. English travellers swarm here, as everywhere else; but they do not mix with the society of the country more than they do elsewhere, and seem to like it even less. The people of Geneva, on the other hand, say, "Their former friends, the English, are so changed they scarcely know them again. They used to be a plain downright race, in whom a certain degree of sauvagerie (oddity and shyness) only served to set off the advantages of a highly cultivated understanding, of a liberal mind, and generous temper, which characterized them in general: their young men were often rather wild, but soon reformed, and became like their fathers. Instead of this, we sce (they say) a mixed assemblage, of whom lamentably few possess any of those qualities we were wont to admire in their predecessors; their former shyness and reserve is changed to disdain and rudeness. If you seek these modern English, they keep aloof, do not mix in conversation, and seem to laugh at you; their conduct, still more strange and unaccountable, in regard to each other, is indicative of contempt or suspicion studiously avoiding to exchange a word, one would suppose they expect to find an adventurer in every individual of their own country not particularly introduced, or at best a person beneath them. You cannot vex or displease them more than by inviting others to meet them, whom they may be compelled to acknowledge afterwards. If they do not find a crowd, they are tired; if you speak of the old English you formerly knew, that was before the Flood; if you talk of books, it is pedantry, and they yawn; of politics, they run wild about Buonaparte! Dancing is the only thing which is sure to please them; at the sound of the fiddle, the thinking nation starts up at once; their young people are adepts in the art, and take pains to become so, spending half their time with the dancing-master you may know the houses where they live by the scraping of the fiddle, and shaking of the floor, which disturb their neighbours. Few bring letters: they complain they are neglected by the good company, and cheated by inn-keepers. The latter, accustomed to the Milords Anglais of former times, or at least having heard of them, think they may charge accordingly, but only find des Anglais pour rire, who bargain at the door, before they venture to come in, for the leg of mutton and bottle of wine, on which they mean to dine. Placed as I am between the two parties, I hear young Englishmen repeat what they have heard in France, that the Genevans are cold, selfish, and interested, and their women des precieuses ridicules, the very milliners and mantua-makers giving themselves airs of modesty and