which all recorded legislation proceeds." "I would confine," adds he, "the term laws to the enactments of a known legislative power, at a certain known period."

Dr. Lieber justly objects to this distinction, and to so restricted a use of the word institution, for why should inability to trace the origin of a political provision, which must have had some origin in remote antiquity,-why should our ignorance, in short, be a ground for distinguishing between political contrivances, which otherwise have precisely the same character. Institutions may grow up within the period of historical tradition, or may have been positively devised before that period. Dr. Arnold, too, gives them all a character of generality, when he conceives of them as a primary condition on which all legislation proceeds, as a sort of ground-law for the state. But local usages of limited application may also come down from remote times. Probably Dr. Arnold himself would not refuse to the tribunitial office at Rome, the name of an institution, although it arose after the beginning of Roman history, and was a provision not for a general but for a particular purpose.

One characteristic of an institution, according to Dr. Lieber, is that it contains within itself an organism, by which it acts and continues. If we understand him, we cannot entirely accept his view. Juries are without question, an institution; but how do they "effect their own independent action and continuance." They are indeed sanctioned by the law, although of older origin than most parts of it; but if the law denied them its protection they would perish. So also the division of states into tribes is found running through all ancient forms of government. It is an institution both in Dr. Arnold's sense and in truth, but possesses no self-perpetuating power, has no strength whatever, except that derived from being germane to the national mind, and from the veneration with which it is regarded.

We may define the institutions of a state, whether they are positive creations or the growths of time beyond the reach of tradition, to be provisions which express or secure the national conception of a state and of public justice; which derive their force not from a private individual will, but from the universal sentiment; which have perpetuity because national character has perpetuity. They are the means adopted by a nation, in its peculiar circumstances, for securing the ends implied in its existence, or the modifications of political life, which its peculiar way of thinking on its conditition suggests. They may be that which safeguards are intended to secure, or the safe

guards themselves. They may be local, like town governments, or special, like juries; may affect the form of the state, like written or unwritten constitutions, or its nature, like the presence or absence of orders of society. They are fixed, as expressing fixed conceptions concerning the state, and as being products of the national mind. They are thus those parts of the political system, which bind generations together and appeal to national feeling. Of course, when in the interest of freedom, they are bulwarks against arbitrary will, hated by tyrants and by tyrrannical theorists.

But institutions may be bad, may tend to perpetuate bad government by their own vital force, and by the national recollections which may cluster around them. And yet a country despotically governed, but possessed of institutions, is in a far more hopeful condition than a country under like control without them. It is true that a despotism dependent only on the strong will of one man may collapse at his death; but so long as there is nothing except insurrection through which the reforming power can act, so long as the better impulses of society leave no point of support in any extant usage or part of the national system, so long there is danger that reform will be but a tempest, will destroy without creating a new organism, and will leave the field open for another despotism after the same type with the last.

Institutions may serve a temporary purpose and then disapper, or may be as permanent as the life of a nation itself. Instances of temporary institutions may be found in Greek history, where in the heroic times kings, nobles, and people were the elements of society, while the first, or the first and the second of the three disappeared from many states in their later history. The same is true of our race. There is no doubt that the English nobles played a very important part in securing the rights of persons, and in checking the overgrowth of royal power; but when the same race became colonists on another continent, both king and nobles were eliminated, and that of necessity, out of the political framework.

Nations differ greatly in their organizing or institutioncreating character. The Slavonic nations, the Turks and Mongolians, as Dr. Lieber observes, are quite destitute of this national power, while the Greeks, but especially the Romans in ancient times, and in modern the English and our own nation, have been signally gifted with it. The Romans retained it only so long as they retained a republic government. As soon as the empire became established, it destroyed or enervated institutions in every muncipal town, made many of the old

organic powers of the constitution mere hollow forms, and put a net work of dependent civil officers and an army in the place of the discordant but vigorous magistrates and assemblies of the commonwealth. Even the glory of the empire, its system of laws, drew its life from the republic; while the taint of despotism in the laws, which has had a disastrous influence on modern legislation and government, is due to the empire.

And so it will be found that every nation, where the spirit of centralization has crept in, has become less capable of originating or sustaining institutions. Local institutions, and the faculty of self-government go together. Without the townshipsystem, public liberty could not have grown up in this country, nor the people have received a sufficient training to understand or to maintain their liberties; on the other hand, let all local powers be swallowed up in a central board for municipal government, and it would be as if all the schools were abolished, and a board of professors convened at Washington to dole out knowledge to the country. Or let a nation deliver itself from a despotical yoke, and adopt a form of seemingly free government, with the principle of centralization contained in it, there will be every danger that here absolutism will be kept out of the political system but a short time; for on the one hand the government must have tremendous strength to reach everywhere and do everything, and on the other there is nothing in existence to train up the people for self-government, to produce a free, all-pervading public sentiment, or to encourage action in unions and associations.

After considering the advantages of "institutional self-government," Dr. Lieber passes on to consider its dangers and inconveniences. One of these is that a due proportion may not be observed between the general and the local institutions. If for any reason the local power is so strong as to paralyze the general administration, there will be danger of a centralizing reaction, or of easy conquest by a foreign foe. And if such a nation lengthen out its existence, it will be unable to act vigorously, either in its internal or external relations, unless the nation as such has a self-governing power, as well as its districts or parts; even the parts themselves may prove unable to preserve their institutions. National and local self-government protect each other.

Institutions again may impede the progress of a nation when they become effete, but are clung to as memorials of the past. The forms of obsolete freedom blind a nation's eyes. They have lost all their power, but not their venerableness; they are even turned into instruments of despotism; still the nation hugs the semblance because it was once a reality.

We must omit to notice our author's chapters on the insecurity of governments, however free, which have no institutions, on imperatorial sovereignty, on centralization, and the influence of capital cities. These are followed in an appendix by important papers on elections, on the abuse of the pardoning power, and on subjects connected with the inquisitorial trial and the law of evidence. Then succeed some of the principal ground laws of English and American liberty, as the Magna Charta, the Petition of Rights, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights, our Declaration of Independence, the articles of the old Confederation, and the present Constitution of the United States. Some of the more important French Constitutions bring up the rear, as the Charta of Louis XVIII, the Constitution of 1848, the present Constitution proclaimed in 1852, the report read by Mr. Troplong in the same year, on petitions to change the republic into an empire, with the Senate's decree to the same effect, and finally the letter of the Minister of the Interior to the departmental prefects, instructing them how to control elections for the legislative body. These documents, appearing by the side of the Great Charter, still in force after more than 600 years, not only show that France is an infant of yesterday in its political life, but show also the vast contrast which exists between the political instincts and skill of the English and the French races.

ART. II.-HISTORY OF THE PULPIT.

History and Repository of Pulpit Eloquence, &c.,_ &c., &c. By HENRY C. FISH, author of Premium Essay "Primitive Piety Revived." New York: M. W. Dodd. 1856.

OUR readers will excuse us for not copying the whole titlepage of these massive volumes, as we intend to give, in the course of our remarks, the most important part of the information with which that page is crowded. The work is designed to be a repository containing the best sermons of the best preachers of all ages. Its selection is confined to deceased divines. Eighty-two eminent preachers are introduced, from

the various nations where the eloquence of the pulpit has flourished; and one of the most celebrated discourses of each is given. These are so arranged that the preachers of any country are placed together in the order of their birth, and that country comes first in order which furnishes at the earliest date some prominent preacher whose discourse is introduced." First, in this order, we have the Greek and Latin Pulpit represented by eight of the most distinguished of the Greek and Latin Fathers, beginning with Tertullian, and ending with Augustine-Tertullian's treatise on Patience, Cyprian's exposition of the Lord's Prayer, one of the orations of Athanasius against the Arians, a beautiful sermon of Chrysostom on excessive grief at the loss of friends; and a characteristic homily of Augustine-characteristic both of the times and of the man, with other interesting and valuable matter. The selection is judicious, and sufficiently ample and varied to give us a taste of the best things which the Fathers have left us, and a glimpse of their modes of thinking and of preaching.

After Augustine, almost a thousand years passed away before another preacher arose who has left us a discourse, which the author has thought worthy of a place in his volumes. The fact is significant. During the whole interval between Augustine and Wickliffe, comprising more than half the time which has yet elapsed since Christ bade his disciples preach the gospel to every creature, there was no preaching which has come down to us deserving to be ranked among the master-pieces of pulpit eloquence. There was no pulpit of the middle ages. The pulpit had been crowded out by the altar. The sacrifice of the inass had taken the place of the sermon; and a corrupt, worldly and ignorant priesthood had superseded that ministry, pure, disinterested, thoroughly instructed in the principles of the gospel, and deeply imbued with its spirit, which Christ established. Such a ministry would have dissipated the darkness of that long night. During this millennium of ignorance and superstition, there were indeed preachers, who, protesting against prevailing corruption and error, deeply stirred the hearts of the men of their generation; but their influence was overborne, and their protest was silenced by the dominant power which had usurped the name of the Church.

At length Wickliffe arose, "the morning star of the refor mation." He was himself a preacher of great influence and power, and in the latter part of his life he became the author and the presiding spirit of a system of itinerancy which moved the heart of England. Selecting from among his converts