in France--political and religious; and
that "the late ebullition of public vengeance was solely directed
against the former." Dr. M'Crie, cursing the catholic with a catholic's
curse, execrates "the stale sophistry of this calumniator." But should
we allow that the Greek professor who advocated their national crime was
the wretch the calvinistic doctor describes, yet the nature of things
cannot be altered by the equal violence of Peter Charpentier and Dr.
M'Crie.

This subject of "Political Religionism" is indeed as nice as it is
curious; _politics_ have been so cunningly worked into the cause of
_religion_, that the parties themselves will never be able to separate
them; and to this moment the most opposite opinions are formed
concerning the same events and the same persons. When public
disturbances broke out at Nismes on the first restoration of the
Bourbons, the protestants, who there are numerous, declared that they
were persecuted for religion, and their cry, echoed by their brethren
the dissenters, resounded in this country. We have not forgotten the
ferment it raised here; much was said, and something was done. Our
minister, however, persisted in declaring that it was a mere _political_
affair. It is clear that our government was right on the _cause_, and
those zealous complainants wrong, who only observed the _effect_; for as
soon as the Bourbonists had triumphed over the Bonapartists, we heard no
more of those sanguinary persecutions of the protestants of Nismes, of
which a dissenter has just published a large history. It is a curious
fact, that when two writers at the same time were occupied in a Life of
Cardinal Ximenes, Flechier converted the cardinal into a saint, and
every incident in his administration was made to connect itself with his
religious character; Marsollier, a writer very inferior to Flechier,
shows the cardinal merely as a politician. The elegances of Flechier
were soon neglected by the public, and the deep interests of truth soon
acquired, and still retain, for the less elegant writer the attention of
the statesman.

A modern historian has observed that "the affairs of religion were the
grand fomenters and promoters of the _Thirty Years' War_, which first
brought down the powers of the North to mix in the politics of the
Southern states." The fact is indisputable, but the cause is not so
apparent. Gustavus Adolphus, the vast military genius of his age, had
designed, and was successfully a