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characters suffer, especially after being tolerated as Romans 
always did tolerate. But so firmly were his words imprinted 
on the minds of his enamoured followers, such literal credit did 
they give to all the dark, mysterious sayings he let drop about 
himself and his future, that they pictured them to themselves 
as absolutely true and as actually fulfilled ; he was present to 
their “ mind’s eye” as clearly as if he had risen from the dead ; 
and when the mental picture vanished from a spiritual retina 
which was too feeble to maintain it, Christ its subject was 
affirmed to have returned to the heaven from whence he 
came. 
I am not here pretending to give a resume or analysis of the 
two works, but rather attempting to sketch in outline the im- 
pression left by them on the mind as to the general drift of their 
argument. Both are marvellously ingenious, and have a certain, 
or rather an uncertain, kind of beauty about them : a beauty like 
that attributed by Bentley to Pope’s Iliad ; “ a very pretty poem, 
Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer;” or, to speak 
more seriously, like St. Augustine’s “quasdam defectiva species 
et umbratica vitiis fallentibus.” But the grand fallacy, the 
7rpwrov \ptvdo c, in them, and in the whole Historico-critical 
argument against Scripture, is that the Scriptures do not come 
to us as legends, but as real history : it is assuming the whole 
question to attribute to them a legendary character. The 
criticism fails utterly when applied to matter for which it was 
never intended; and by so employing it we may arrive at the 
most absurd results, and explain away the most undoubted 
facts. Archbishop Whately, in his “Historic Doubts of Na- 
poleon Buonaparte,” showed the ridiculous conclusions to 
which we may be brought by the misapplication of the Nie- 
buhrian criticism. We will try another instance, in a some- 
what different style. Let us take the Wars of the Roses ; we 
shall be able to find in the history of this period not a disputed 
succession, but a conflict between the landed proprietors and 
the artisans. 
“ In this political myth or saga” (we may conceive our critic 
to say) “we meet with two distinct sets of names of alleged 
monarchs, which undoubtedly represent events and interests 
personified. The kings on one side arc all named Henry, 
those of the other are either Richard or Edward. In the name 
Henry, properly Ilain-ric, rich in groves or forests, we see 
personified the class of land-owners ; a view which is confirmed 
by the correct interpretation of the name by which they called 
themselves, Lancaster. This curious but significant word, 
compounded of the British fan (our lawn), a field, and the 
Latin cant rum, a castle, shows that these forest-proprietors, 
