well at Cessingen has reached the enormous depth of 1787 feet.* Its cost has amounted to 116,000 francs. This, according to report, is very far inferior in depth to the Chinese, who dig wells of 1800 and 3000 feet, and at the low sum of 10,000 or 20,000 francs. The regulations laid down for the prosecution of these singular undertakings by Jobard appear extremely judicious. The inventions of M. Kind have furnished immense facilities for these difficult achievements; but without drawings, which the nature of this work will scarce admit, we cannot give a perfect illustration of them. Descriptions of machinery are seldom understood without this aid, and even then read by but few, save those intelligent persons who take a deep interest in the immense motor agency at present in play. Among the curious facts stated above by M. Jobard, as likely to arise from boring the earth as described, one of the most improbable, the ridicule of every salon of savants in France, has just been realized. A bore effected in the Lower Rhine gave out oil of petroleum with the gushing water. The proprietor has already obtained 200 hectolitres.

M. Jobard proposes a different sound from any at present used, not of solid iron, but of hollow tubes, of three or four inches in diameter, similar to our gas conducts; the lower part consisting of a steel ring, and the play would in this case be circular, and leave its centre intact.

As M. Jobard has not distinctly described the rest of his apparatus, we merely indicate the great variety of his invention, which is by circular pressure, since in all the other details we must await more accurate description. His own opinion of the power of his instrument is evidently high, and he speaks of its accelerating force as equal to gunpowder. One curious point connected with these investigations, is the great question of central heat, on which we expect many useful hints in their progress. We now close our review of M. Jobard, whose work certainly exhibits great talent and ingenuity, a clear conception of the resources of modern art, embellished by brilliant and playful sallies that enliven us in the course of grave inquiries. Dulce est desipere in loco appears his plan, and in it he is assuredly successful. His book is as pleasing as it is instructive. The feeling expressed throughout for quietude and calm to prosecute the discoveries, the immense discoveries opening to the resources of genius, is most natural. Men of sense must applaud the spirit that would bring heads into contact for the mutual elevation of the species,

The excavations in Mexico are of course distinct from the boring process, The latter already surpass in depth any ancient excavation,

rather than idly knock each other's brains out to please a Thiers or a Paris mob. The philosopher looks on war with horror; it is to him the eclipse of science; it is the breaking up of all those bands of social intercourse among the enlightened of all nations, which tend to the improvement of possibly even the universe. And assuredly if the few men that have wit and good feeling in the world, could be combined, and their votes taken, they would be unanimously for the cessation of this scourge of nations, this source of barbarism, this extinction of all organization in chaos and endless night.

ART. IX. Du Catholicisme du Protestantisme et de la Philosophie en France. Par Francisque Bouvet, en Réponse à M. Guizot. Paris, 1840.

THERE are few subjects on which, however deep the interest expressed in some directions, more real ignorance exists than on the great constituents of pure Catholicism. The three great Church communions, the Greek, the Roman, and the Protestant, are all, in the mass of their members, in a happy ignorance of what their constituent principles really are; the Dissenting bodies are still more palpably in error in establishing dissent as a bond of union; they, however the others may unite in the great feeling of Catholicism, until they repudiate that principle, can never approach to the description of a Christian church. In the Greek communion, though more eastern in tone than the others, intelligence and rational devotion are at an extremely low ebb. The Roman possesses far weightier material, much learning, deep devotedness, and large world-abstractiveness, which, however mistaken in its application, is a genuine Catholic principle, and as such ought to be respected. The Protestant is superior to the Roman or Greek in the rationality of her devotion, in fixing her authorities on the Bible, and not independent of the Bible; but has possibly a tendency to rationalize too far, though this is checking on her part, but still she is embarrassed in the application of her distinctive appellation, which embraces the Lutheran denier of episcopacy equally with its firm Anglican supporter. The confession of Augsburg, the noblest document of Catholic confession on earth, independent of the church's creeds, is, we regret to say, little understood by most who call themselves Protestants; and their great embodied statement in England, in the thirty-nine articles, is equally unknown to them. The writer of the present article was in conversation, some time since, with a

lady, well connected, whose minister had been preaching a series of discourses on the thirty-nine articles; and she put to him, with the greatest simplicity, the following question, "Where are the thirty-nine articles to be found?" To which, he replied, in your Prayer Book, and if you give it me I will show them to you. They were then pointed out; and the exclamation was, "How strange that I never looked in that part of the book before." Great ignorance then demonstrably prevails among the most rational body of Christians, as to the great constituent principles of Catholicism. The Dissenter, a very wide term of course, too wide to admit of description here, throwing out the Unitarians in company with the Deists, talks largely about religious liberty, but admits very little of it into practice in his own community; and wherever, as in the case of the pilgrim fathers, or the covenanters, he forms a distinct religious body, lays down principles far more stringent than any of those against which he has denounced his Maranatha. In looking at these bodies, at the first glance one should be apt to consider that Catholicism were extinct; but still three out of them retain an affinity that is hourly strengthening in resemblance to their lost parent. The Greek Church will obviously follow in the wake of the Romish, whatever direction that may take; for though the Patriarch may resist the Pope in any temporal assumptions, or interference with his spiritual authority, yet Rome, the mistress of the world no more, with scarce sufficient power to preserve her Italian states, and with the principles of the Popedom hourly weakening in the most Roman Catholic country next to Spain, having now no established church there, will grow gentler and gentler still in her Asiatic elements of power, since she is wisely contending for rule amid the European, and trusts again to establish herself at the centre of intelligence. The Greek Church is also grossly venal; all its offices are matters of sale, metropolitans, archbishops or bishops. The Patriarch of Constantinople is its head; the celibacy of the clergy is prohibited, and the priests marry before ordination. It contains a most ignorant class of ecclesiastics; they deny purgatory, and yet their liturgy seems expressly to imply that Christ endured the pains of Hades; their communion is in both kinds, similar to the Protestant. This church, that of the voluptuous Greek, the Levantine, and the Russian, boasts no adherents likely to influence highly the coming events that are now culminating in their

ascent.

The battle for the souls of the world, for the dominion over the regions of spirits, for mastery in a strife that involves all the elements of political, mental, and spiritual power, lies in consequence between the Roman Catholic and the Protestant; the

Dissenter being hors de combat, for in his communion there can be no fixity; and the challenge has been fairly thrown down by an English prelate, and has never yet been met, to point out any Dissenting denomination that has remained unchanged in doctrine for one hundred years. The mighty principles then of Catholic verity are before us, to determine on between the two great leading religious communities. And among the first great questions to be arranged is the precise element of spiritual power.

The British Church has for centuries affirmed the great principle, that ecclesiastics are subject to the crown, a principle that even Spain never conceded to Rome. There can be no harm, as far as we can see, in all these churches meeting together, and agreeing among them to elect an universal head. This might be arranged by a rota of elections, leaving it in Rome, Greece, or Britain; but to expect that an Italian sovereign is to lord it over other states than his own, is to anticipate an absolute impossibility. An evil fraught with such vast mischief over the past centuries, that it may be said to have been the dead weight on the progress of Christendom for ages. But this ecclesiastical primate of earth must have a power purely spiritual, and must also himself be amenable to civil obedience and to temporal rule. Here, then, is one great question disposed of, which preserves as much immunity from the secular power as is desirable, and keeps the spiritual intact. The sovereign of a land, then, must be the head of the Church in that land; he must rule her in temporalities, she him in spiritualities. As to the question of an infallible head, this is only a vast absurdity. The intelligent Romanist, when closely questioned, seems to fight off the discussion; one ascribing it to the Pope, another to a general council, some to both, all denying it on matters not spiritual, and the whole question fairly resolves into that great fundamental doctrine of every existing Church, that the true Church has in fundamentals never been wrong, that she has always possessed light enough to guide her to salvation, though in some communities in a distant, dangerous and darkened route. To this extent only can the infallibility of any Church be pleaded, and to this extent it may be fairly carried. It is evident, that the line of the glorified must be continuous throughout all ages, as well as the revelation, and it were ill for the Protestant to deny the excellency of a Gregory or a Xavier. But there is one subject connected with this question, of such vastly important results, that it is only fitting to enter upon it fully, and this is the authority of the Church. In illustration of this point we shall recount the following anecdote.

Some time since, a Protestant minister was requested to administer the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to a sick and aged

lady, which he accordingly did, and she received the holy elements with her sister. After the sacrament was concluded, the sister of the invalid said that she was a Catholic, and she hoped she had not done wrong in receiving it in two kinds; the minister told her that she had assuredly not done wrong, for that her reception of it was in the ancient Catholic usage. He then showed her the passage in the 1st Epist. Cor. "As often as ye do eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death until he come.” The same minister was afterwards in conversation with the Roman Catholic Vicar Apostolical depute, and narrated the anecdote. "Yes," said Dr. ——, "but you seem to forget that in that you evinced great ignorance of the MSS., the generality read ʼn or, and not xa and, in the passage, thus making it a matter of indifference whichever be administered.” The Protestant replied that he was a minister with a large cure of souls, a humble parish priest, but still he had contrived to retain some ancient scholarship, and having had means of collating every MS. in the world on that passage, knew he could not be mistaken. "It matters not," was the reply, "the authority of the Church is sufficient for us." "But do you mean to say that the authority of the Church is to obtain against the authority of all the MSS.?" This was simply answered by a repetition of the authority of the Church. “Well, then, if it must be so, I take you on your own principle: St. Paul knew the practice of the Church in his day, he would not have contradicted that of the other apostles, yet St. Paul administered it in both kinds. St. Paul is a fair representation of the Church in his day, and St. Paul obviously administered the sacrament, in both kinds, to the laity.” "But how weak your Church stands in the question of authority." "On the contrary, it is stronger than your own, for your Church authority is distinct from the Bible, while our Church authority is of the essence of the Bible. We claim a power for the Church on the Bible declarations of it, you claim that power simply on your own." "But the right of private judgment then is claimed by you!" "Only so far as the Bible does not enlighten us, only in things foreign to the Bible; on all in the Bible we are agreed, and also to obey what the Bible defines to be the true authority of the Church." Now, any principle like that, maintained in this anecdote by the Romanist, of a Church authority, not based on the Bible, was shown to be untenable at the Reformation. The right of private judgment is no more allowed to the Protestant than the Romanist. But the Protestant sees his Church in the Bible, and the Romanist out of the Bible. The Word reproves and informs the Protestant, but the will of the Romanist is blindly submissive to dicta on Church