atter. Passion had exhausted itself; energy was worn out by
exertion; enthusiasm damped by disappointment. We no longer see men nobly
sacrificing themselves for what they deemed the public good; the generous
had ceased to obliterate the selfish passions; good sense was the
characteristic of the period; a desire for repose its leading principle;
selfishness its ruling motive. It is ever so with men, when vehement
passions are not awakened, and the ardour of visionary pursuit has not
obliterated the desire for immediate gratification.

But if the eighteenth century can never rival the eras of the Reformation
and the French Revolution in heart-stirring events, animated narrative,
picturesque description, generous devotion, and sanguinary ambition, it
is, perhaps, superior to either in the lessons of political wisdom with
which it is fraught. It is so because it exhibits on a great scale, and
for a long period, the _results_ of those changes which had been the
subject of that vehement struggle in the two preceding centuries, and
enables us to appreciate, by actual experience, the benefits and evils of
those great alterations in civil and religious institutions, which, after
so long and severe a contest, had at length come to be thoroughly
established. The survey is, in some respects, disheartening, but it is
instructive; if it dispels many theories and blights much anticipation, it
confirms many truths, and has established some principles which will
probably never again be questioned. We are not aware that the history of
the eighteenth century has ever yet been written in this spirit. It is
understood now to be in the hands of learning and genius; let us hope that
equanimity and impartial judgment will preside as much as these brilliant
qualities in the completion of the great undertaking.

The great passion of the sixteenth century was for religious emancipation.
The real evil which it was the object of the Reformation to shake off was
the despotism of the Romish priesthood: the freedom for which the
Reformers contended was the freedom of the human soul. The immediate
object, the exciting cause, indeed, of Luther's movements, was the
overthrow of the corrupt sale of indulgences, which, in the time of Leo
X., had brought such scandal on the Church of Rome; but religious freedom
was the general and durable passion of the Reformation. It was the
constrained uniformity of worship, the compulsory unity of belief, the
slavish su