ca." But perhaps
large minds have been peculiarly liable to this fluctuation concerning
the sphere of tradition, because, while they have attacked its
misapplications, they have been the more solicited by the vague sense
that tradition is really the basis of our best life. Our sentiments may
be called organized traditions; and a large part of our actions gather
all their justification, all their attraction and aroma, from the memory
of the life lived, of the actions done, before we were born. In the
absence of any profound research into psychological functions or into the
mysteries of inheritance, in the absence of any comprehensive view of
man's historical development and the dependence of one age on another, a
mind at all rich in sensibilities must always have had an indefinite
uneasiness in an undistinguishing attack on the coercive influence of
tradition. And this may be the apology for the apparent inconsistency of
Glanvil's acute criticism on the one side, and his indignation at the
"looser gentry," who laughed at the evidences for witchcraft on the
other. We have already taken up too much space with this subject of
witchcraft, else we should be tempted to dwell on Sir Thomas Browne, who
far surpassed Glanvil in magnificent incongruity of opinion, and whose
works are the most remarkable combination existing, of witty sarcasm
against ancient nonsense and modern obsequiousness, with indications of a
capacious credulity. After all, we may be sharing what seems to us the
hardness of these men, who sat in their studies and argued at their ease
about a belief that would be reckoned to have caused more misery and
bloodshed than any other superstition, if there had been no such thing as
persecution on the ground of religious opinion.

On this subject of Persecution, Mr. Lecky writes his best: with clearness
of conception, with calm justice, bent on appreciating the necessary
tendency of ideas, and with an appropriateness of illustration that could
be supplied only by extensive and intelligent reading. Persecution, he
shows, is not in any sense peculiar to the Catholic Church; it is a
direct sequence of the doctrines that salvation is to be had only within
the Church, and that erroneous belief is damnatory--doctrines held as
fully by Protestant sects as by the Catholics; and in proportion to its
power, Protestantism has been as persecuting as Catholicism. He
maintains, in opposition to the favorite modern notion of