of the Austrian generals, the celebrated Tilly, the still more celebrated Walstein; particulars respecting these subjects, and many others highly attractive, you will find in Coxe and in Harte, and to these authors I must leave you.

I will make, however, a few remarks, and first of Gus

tavus.

As it must needs be that offences will come, as violence and injustice can only be repelled by force, as mankind must and will have their destroyers, it is fortunate when the high courage and activity of which the human character is capable, are tempered with a sense of justice, wisdom, and benevolence; when he who leads thousands to the field has sensibility enough to feel the nature of his awful office, and wisdom enough to take care that he directs against its proper objects the afflicting storm of human devastation. It is not always that they who have commanded the admiration of mankind have claims like these to their applause. Courage and sagacity can dignify any man, whatever be his cause; they can ennoble a wretch like Tilly, while he fights the battles of a Ferdinand. It is not always that these great endowments are so united with other high qualities as to present to the historian at once a Christian, a soldier, and a statesman; yet such was Gustavus Adolphus, a hero deserving the name, perfectly distinguishable from those who have assumed the honours that belong to it, the military executioners, with whom every age has been infested.

The life of this extraordinary man has been written by Mr. Harte, with great activity of research, and a scrupulous examination of his materials, which are understood to be the best, though they are not sufficiently particularized. The book will disappoint the reader. Mr. Harte writes often with singular bad taste, and never with any masterly display of his subject; but it may be compared with Coxe, and must be considered.

The great question which it is necessary for the fame of Gustavus should be settled in his favour, is the invasion of Germany. Sweden, the country of which he was king, could, at the time, furnish for the enterprise only her two great products, "iron and man, the soldier and his sword;" and with these a leader like Gustavus, some centuries before,

might have disposed of Europe at his pleasure; but, happily for mankind, the invention of gunpowder and the progress of science had made war a question, not merely of physical force, but of expense. The surplus produce of the land and labour of the snowy regions of Sweden were little fitted to support a large military establishment either at home or abroad, little fitted to contend with the resources of the House of Austria. It was therefore very natural for the counsellors of Gustavus to represent strongly to their sovereign the expenses of a war on the continent, the great power of the emperor, and the reasonableness of supposing that the German electors were themselves the best judges of the affairs of the empire, and the best able to vindicate their own civil and religious liberties.

But it was clear, on the other hand, that the power of the House of Austria, which had already distantly menaced, might soon be enabled to oppress, the civil and religious liberties of Sweden: it was impossible to separate the interests of that kingdom from those of the Protestant princes of Germany; and, therefore, the only question that remained was, whether Gustavus should come forward as a leader of the combination against Ferdinand II., or wait to be called in, and join the general cause as an auxiliary.

Now the prince, who was naturally the head of the Protestant union, was the Elector of Saxony, a prince whose politics and conduct at the time could only awaken, in the minds of good men, contempt and abhorrence. If, therefore, no one interfered, and that immediately, all was lost; and the very want of a principal, and the very hopelessness of the Protestant cause, must have been the very arguments that weighed most with a prince like Gustavus, and were indeed the very arguments that would have influenced an impartial reasoner, at the time, in favour of this great attempt, provided the abilities of Gustavus were clearly of a commanding nature.

On this last supposition, it must also be allowed that the case, when examined, supplied many important probabilities to countenance the enterprise. Speculations of this kind you should indulge, as much as possible, while you are engaged in historical pursuits; it is the difference between reading history and studying it.

After all, it is often for genius to justify its own projects by their execution; and such may, if necessary, be the defence of Gustavus.

If any war can be generous and just, it is that waged by a combination of smaller states against a greater in defence of their civil and religious liberty. Such was the contest in which Gustavus was to engage. Nothing, therefore, could be wanting to him but success. He won it by his virtues and capacity, and his name has been justly consecrated in the history of mankind.

It sometimes happens, that when the master hand is removed, the machine stops, or its movements run into incurable disorder; but Gustavus was greater than great men when Gustavus perished, his cause did not perish with him. The mortal part of the hero lay covered with honourable wounds and breathless in the plains of Lutzen; but his genius still lived in the perfect soldiers he had created, the great generals he had formed, the wise minister he had employed, and the senate and people of Sweden, whom he had elevated to his own high sense of honour and duty. Neither his generals, his soldiers, his minister, nor his people, were found so unworthy of their sovereign as to be daunted by his loss, and they were not to be deterred from the prosecution of the great cause which he had bequeathed them. The result was, that sixteen years afterwards, at the peace of Westphalia, Sweden was a leading power in the general settlement of the interests of Europe; and if Gustavus had yet lived, he would have seen the very ground on which he first landed with only fourteen thousand men to oppose the numerous and regular armies of the House of Austria publicly ceded to his crown, the power of that tyrannical and bigoted family confessedly humbled, and the independence and religion of his own kingdom sufficiently provided for in the emancipation and safety of the Protestant princes of Germany.

In considering the reign and merits of Gustavus, our attention may be properly directed to the following points:-the invasion of Germany, the improvements which the king made in the military art, the means whereby he could support his armies, the causes of his success, his conduct after the victory of Leipsic, his management of men and of the circumstances

of his situation, his private virtues and public merits, his tolerance, and the nature of his ambition-how far it was altered by his victories-the service he rendered Europe. Much assistance is contained rather than presented to the reader in the work of Harte.

The history of the thirty years' war has been written by Schiller; and when this era has been considered in the more simple and regular historians, the performance of this celebrated writer may be perused, not only with great entertainment, but with some advantage. Indeed, any work by Schiller must naturally claim our perusal; but neither is his account so intelligible nor his opinions so just as those of our own historian Coxe.

The extraordinary character of Walstein-the great general who could alone be opposed by Ferdinand to Gustavuswas sure to catch the fancy of a German dramatist like Schiller. Here, for once, were realized all the darling images of the scene: mystery without any possible solution; energy more than human, magnificence without bounds, distinguished capacity; gloom, silence, and terror; injuries and indignation; nothing ordinary, nothing rational; and, at last, probably a conspiracy, and, at least, an assassination.

The campaigns of Gustavus, and the military part of his history, will be found more than usually interesting. Coxe has laboured this portion of the narrative with great diligence, and, as he evidently thinks, with great success.

We are now arrived at the conclusion of our subject, and I have been obliged to refer to such large masses of historical reading, and must have left so many spaces unoccupied in the minds of my hearers, that I think it best to stop and recall to your observation the steps of our progress, and advert to the leading points.

The whole of our present subject, then, should, I think, be separated into the following great divisions: first, we are to examine the contest between the Roman Catholics and the Reformers from the breaking out of the Reformation to the peace of Passau; then the provisions of that peace; next, the causes of the thirty years' war, which were, first, the conduct of the Protestant states and princes, Lutheran and Calvinistic, from the death of Charles V., and their impolitic

and fatal intolerance of each other; secondly, the conduct of the princes of the House of Austria, Ferdinand I., Maximilian, Rodolph, Matthias, and Ferdinand II., more particularly their intolerance to their subjects in Bohemia and Hungary; then the peculiar circumstances in consequence of which the cause of the Bohemians and the oppressed subjects of the House of Austria became at length the cause of the Reformation in Germany, and the Elector Palatine the hero of it; next, the misfortunes of that prince; then the interference and character of the renowned Gustavus Adolphus, the great and efficient hero of that cause, and of the thirty years' war, at which we thus arrive; then the campaigns between him and the celebrated generals (Tilly and others) employed by the Austrian family, which form a new point of interest. Again, the continuance of the contest after his death under the generals and soldiers he had formed, which becomes another; and in this manner we are conducted to the settlement of the civil and religious differences of Germany by the treaty of Westphalia, more than one hundred years after the first appearance of Luther, which treaty is thus left, as the remaining object of our curiosity and examination, for it is the termination of the whole subject.

This celebrated treaty has always been the study of those who wish to understand the history of Europe and the different views and systems of its component powers and states.

There are references in Coxe sufficient to direct the inquiries of those who are desirous of examining it. But during the late calamities of Europe, after being an object of the greatest attention for a century and a half, it has shared the fate of every thing human; it has passed through its appointed period of existence, and is now no more.

As a great record, however, in the history of Europe; as a great specimen of what human nature is, when acting amid its larger and more important concerns, it must ever remain a subject of interest to the politician and philosopher. This treaty was the final adjustment of the civil and religious disputes of a century.

In examining the treaty of Westphalia, the first inquiry is with respect to its ecclesiastical provisions.

After the Reformation had once begun, the first effort of