The army, drowned in the midst of the floods of the enemy, did not see them; and it fled in disorder on the road to Charleroi. L'histoire n'a plus que quelques désespoirs sublimes raconter, et elle doit les retracer pour l'éternel honneur des martyrs de notre gloire, pour la punition de ceux qui prodiguent sans raison le sang des hommes!

| made on their flanks by several British squadrons threw them into disorder; the runaway's fell back across the ravine; the neighbouring regiments, seeing some troops belonging to the and became unsteady. Cries were raised that Guard in disarray, thought it was the Old Guard, all was lost-that the Guard was driven back. The soldiers even maintain that in some cases disaffected men exclaimed, "Sauve qui peut !" However this may have been, a panic (une terreur panique) spread simultaneously over the whole field of battle: the troops rushed in the foot soldiers, troopers, artillerymen, ammunigreatest confusion on the line of communication; tion waggons, hurried away to reach it; the Old Guard, which was drawn up in reserve, was co-infected by it, and drawn away by the contagion.

'In an instant th a. my was converted into a shapeless mass. All arms were mixed together, and it was impossible to form a single this astonishing confusion, caused several cocorps again. The enemy, who caught sight of lumns of cavalry to debouch; the disorder increased; the confusion accompanying darkness rendered all attempts to rally the troops, or show them their error, ineffectual.'

M. Thiers also endeavours to give Napo

The above description, condensed from M. Thiers, may be magnifique, mais elle n'est pas l'histoire. The defeat of the Imperial Guard is cleverly concealed under an imaginary cloud of English and Prussian cavalry. This grand and final attack was made during a desperate conflict in the centre; the lumns were preceded by clouds of skirmishers, and supported by a tremendous fire of artillery; and a general advance of the French line was attempted. The gallant veterans in the first column, after having suffered severely from the fire of the English line, and fallen into disorder, were finally routed by the charges of Lord Saltoun, and of Maitland under the Duke's personal direction; and these charges are not noticed by our historian, any more than the facts of their throw-leon some credit for heroism at the coming away their arms and knapsacks, and retreating in great confusion. The second column, as we well know, advanced, ten or twelve minutes after the first, upon Adam's Brigade, diverging towards the right to take advantage of an undulation in the ground. It was subjected to severe trial, in consequence of Sir John Colborne having formed his regiment in a line parallel to the direction of its march, and attacked its left flank. Its left sections were wheeled round; but it was charged, after severe fighting, by portions of three regiments on that flank. The British cheers rose above the shouts of Vive l'Empereur!' It was thrown into uncontrollable disorder, and fled, a scattered mass, after the remains of the first column. It was, in fact, the defeat of the Guard that caused so complete a panic in the French army, and was the immediate occasion of Wellington's advance; whereas M. Thiers represents that defeat to have been caused by the arrival of the Prussians, and the general consternation which it occasioned.* Napoleon admits the truth so far when he says in his official ac

count:

6

mencement of the rout; though he is obliged to admit that he was not forthcoming when his presence was most required. Napoleon said of himself, by way of apology, in the same report in the Moniteur:-The very squadrons de service, in attendance on the Emperor, were overthrown and hurried away by these tumultuous waves, and there was no help for it but to follow the torrent. Ney, who is admitted to have been one of the last to leave the field, says, in his letter to the Duke of Otranto, dated Paris, 26th June, 1815, after first expressing his extreme disgust at the lying message brought to him from Napoleon by Labédoyère:-'I arrived at Marchienne-au-pont at four o'clock in the morning, ignorant of what had become of the Emperor, who, before the end of the battle, had entirely disappeared, and who, I was allowed to believe, might be either killed or taken prisoner.' The Emperor's disappearance admits of but one interpretation. His spirit was less noble than his ambition was great. A last throw for Empire was worth every sacrifice but one. Perish the gallant Ney, perish the unrivalled veterans of the Imperial Guard, survive Napoleon! He placed another at the head of his men in that desperate charge; and he deserted them in their extremity.

The old story of General Cambronne (who surrendered to a drummer, and afterwards had the assurance to present himself at the Duke's dinner-table) is repeated both by M. Thiers and M. Hugo, as it was by M. de Lamartine in his 'Histoire de la Restauration.'

of the Great Lord Peter in such words as these: Merciful God! to what is' this writer leading these schools? . . . to drown them in a dead negation of other men's opinions; in a fellowship of hatred-accursed arrangement!' (Tract ii. p. 67.)

stand an anomalous set of volumes as to | contention for the faith once delivered to which it is difficult to say, with perfect the saints, we are anathematized in terms fairness, to which side of the controversy not unworthy of a legitimate descendart they belong. These are typically represented in the Tracts for Priests and People,' on which, therefore, we will first say a few words. The writers of these volumes are in a great measure occupied in replying to the Essayists, whilst yet their own positions are little more defensible or less remote from orthodoxy than those which they think it worth while to attack. They were begun, we are told, when the controversy respecting the "Essays and Reviews" was at its height' (Preface, i.);-that their writers could not sympathise with the Essays because of their negative character; nor with those who condemned them, because the condemnation also was negative;-that they felt it to be their business to express sympathy with the strong convictions of all parties and of all men' (p. ix.); and not to tremble at the censures of mobs' or of Convocations' (p. x.);-and further, that it was a special object of the writers.. to show that opposite conclusions' reached 'by opposite processes of thought' are necessary to the existence of the English Church; and that, if she fall into the condition of a Church standing on opinions, she will renounce her position, and be deserted by God' (p. xi.).

When we add that one of the chief writers in these volumes is the Rev. F. Maurice, we shall at once have prepared our readers to expect, what they will assuredly find, that they have to do with noble instincts, with high aspirations, with considerable subtlety and power; but, withal, with strange luminous mists which repeatedly promise us enlightenment on the deepest and most interesting of unanswered questions, whilst, instead of giving it, they are ever hiding from us, in the puzzling involutions with which their impalpable wreaths invest them, some of the greatest truths which were plain to us before.

There are notable instances of all this in the two Tracts entitled the Mote and the Beam,' and Morality and Divinity.' Sprinkled through these there are, we gladly allow, many noble thoughts nobly expressed. There is also a great deal of the hard language with which Mr. Maurice seems increasingly to treat all who differ from him. Thus, for instance, because we urged upon those who are too often divided asunder as High Churchmen and Low Churchmen, that, since both perceived the importance of the great truths now in dispute, it was a time for healing animosities by a common earnest

*Quarterly Review,' vol. cix.

*

The leading idea of both Tracts is the defence of Creeds and Articles; and here there gathers thickly over every well-known headland what we have ventured to designate as this writer's luminous vapour. Of course we agree altogether with him in defending Creeds and Articles against all comers; but with his mode of defence, which is most characteristic, we have no sympathy whatever. Creeds, we are assured, must not be regarded as containing any dogma. They are not, that is to say, what the Church has always deemed them to be, statements of the great facts of revela tion, derived partly from primitive tradition, partly from the judgment of the whole Church on questions raised by heretics; and therefore, for those who believe in the collective Church as the transmitter of the witness of the Spirit, authentic statements of those facts. No! thus to treat them, we are taught is their most deadly abuse. 'A mere authoritative declaration of faith' carries no more power with it (Tract vi. p. 22). It demands moral slavery, prostration of heart as well as intellect, and involves all those fatal consequences which the Bishop of Oxford has pointed out in his first sermon, and which he so happily describes as a neglect of revela tion' (p. 28). When the Reformers,' we are told again (Tract ii. p. 43), acting on this mistake, 'put forward dogmatic confutation' of error... and penal sentences . . . ‘their own doctrine shrivelled into a dry, dead, cruel formula, powerful only for cursing.' So momentous does the writer think it to avoid these evils, that he consents to be at variance with his dearest friends, and to incur the suspicion of deliberate dishonesty' (vi. p. 36), as the price of maintaining that in the Athanasian Creed, 'in speaking of the Trinity, we cannot be speaking of a dogma;' whilst, if that Creed does canonize a mere dogma, and anathematize those who dissent from it, we should wish it to perish utterly and for ever' (vi. 36).

After the most patient and repeated endeavours to understand what all this means, we confess ourselves entirely baffled. The Creeds, beyond all question or dispute, are— as the Tract writers argue with a great deal of pomp of reasoning, as if persons could be found who denied the self-evident proposition-statements about the Divine Persons

of the blessed Godhead, not those Persons | ford, and published with the title of 'The themselves. Such statements are dogma: Revelation of God the Probation of Man." dogma concerning the facts which are the These sermons ran rapidly through several most real and most important to the whole editions, and gave rise to a controversy of reasonable creation. They have, in every which Mr. Maurice says, 'The subject is one age of the Church, been used as pointing out of permanent interest. The author criticised the right faith and guarding the humble is the most eloquent of modern Divines; the from errors concerning it. Mr. Maurice has critic represents a widely-diffused lay feeling. invented for them the newest and the most Pamphlets have appeared in answer to the marvellous use. Creeds are meant to deliver Layman. He has replied. The controversy, us from the worship of opinions (ii. 38). which has risen out of that concerning 'One of the blessings of having Articles' of "Essays and Reviews," may continue when the Faith is that they permit partial state- they are forgotten' (Tract ii.). The main ments' of the truth (p. 65). Surely common object of the Bishop's sermon is to set plainly sense rejects such glosses as these. Mr. before the young the principle that doubts Maurice, it seems to us, might just as well, about the truth of Revelation are to be met when seeking his way through an unknown like any other temptations to evil thoughts. country by the help of direction-posts, address On the wickedness of such a doctrine the his driver with the words, Signposts are all- authors of the Tracts' are very eloquent. important. Little do men who despise them Mr. Maurice thinks that these 'doubts may know how often they themselves have profited have been cast into the soul by a gracious by them. Yes; treat them with all honour, Spirit' (Tract vi. 30); whilst one of his combut do not turn them into an intolerable rades defines doubts as 'a sacred agony of abuse by conceiving that they are to guide man's nature' (vi. 4) in its noblest and most your course! No; they are facts. To make typical embodiments;' claims, in words we them guides would be an intolerable tyranny. will not reprint, our Blessed Lord as an inAccursed be such slavery! Why am I to stance of them. He then proceeds to revile, go that path because another has set up the in good set terms, the Bishop as coming sign? The proper use of such instruments under the condemnation of the friends of is to protect our liberty; to witness to us Job, because he would deprive men of the that we may drive where we will, may do full, and innocent enjoyment of this 'sacred everything, except receive their testimony to agony.' Almost the only comment we will direct our steps.' Conceive of such an ad- make on all this wasted abuse is to quote dress delivered with enormous energy, and for our reader's own judgment the especial you have, we believe, Mr. Maurice's whole passage in the sermon against which it is doctrine on Creeds full of his mystical elo- directed:quence; but we greatly doubt whether the wayward philosopher would not be benighted

before he reached his home.

We have dwelt longer upon all this than it may seem to deserve. But, in truth, it is of no small moment thoroughly to understand how far in the great struggle with unbelief these writers will help us. For they offer us their service: they condemn alike the open infidel, the German rationalist, and the Essayists. They are for maintaining the Faith; whilst their names, their high moral tone, their intellectual subtlety, and, above all, their loud, and we doubt not sincere, expressions of sympathy with the young and the tempted, must invest their writings with much that is attractive. Yet, alas! almost the whole of these two volumes is characterised by these hazy mists, amidst which the old landmarks are scarcely to be seen, and which can hardly fail to betray the wanderer to the false guidance of the bolder spirits of

unbelief.

One main subject of these attacks is the second of two sermons preached before the University of Oxford by the Bishop of Ox

'But go one step further, and see, if you would know the utter extremity of this loss, what is the doubter's death. It is always awful to meet great and unchangeable realities with which we have trifled as if they were meaningless shadows. And what a meeting with them is there upon that deathbed, when conscience, at last awake, is crowding on the astonished memory the record of a life's transgressions; when the enemy is accusing and tormenting the soul, which is all but his own; when the terrible summons to the judgment of the just God, like the low deep voices of advancing thunder-clouds, is beginning to shake the heart; when to have a firm hold on one sure promise; when to cling to the hem of the Healer's garment; when to see, as the ransom of a multitude of sins, the blood of His wounded side, would be indeed the soul's only and its sufficient refuge: then in that hour of agony to be compassed about with selfchosen doubts, to have the refinements, and the subtleties, and the questions, and the uncertainties which the man had taken to himself instead

of God's sure word of promise and the atoning

Man: Two Sermons preached before the University of Oxford, Jan. 27 and Feb. 3, 1861. By Samuel Lord Bishop of Oxford. Parkers, Oxford.

The Revelation of God the Probation of