Summing up, then, we see: 1. That, in rejecting the historical conception of the primeval religious belief of mankind, Hume took up a position which none of his own successors consider as at all tenable.

2. The further these successors have carried their revolt against history, the more have they become involved in contradiction with each other.

3. The more consistently and radically the dogma of primitive savagery has been carried out, the more inevitably has it landed its advocates in the doctrine of primitive bestiality.

4. In their eagerness to destroy the possibility or credibility of primeval monotheism, these more consistent and radical theorists have inadvertently gone so far as to render a selfconsistent evolutional biology or sociology impossible.

5. In consequence hereof the more clear-sighted of the representatives of Darwinism are just now deftly re-approaching the long-scouted historic conception-by representing the first men as superior to the modern savage in intellectual endowment, by calling their powers high, by considering their judgments of natural objects substantially correct, by admitting their knowledge of the true and normal form of the family, by conceding to them a truly human appreciation of ethical excellences and obligations, by allowing to them a capacity to conceive of an almighty Supreme Spirit, the Author and rightful Governor of the world, and by recognizing that nearly all religions present clear traces of corruption. So far as principles are concerned these representations surrender their whole case. With these data Adamic revelation becomes quite as possible, and quite as credible, as Abrahamic, or Mosaic, or Christian Revela

tion.

This unclad Adam of the garden was no more incapacitated for the knowledge of his Father than was that naked second Adam for whose advent Mary provided the swaddling clothes. If the former seems too undeveloped to be an organ of divine revelation, the latter, the highest of all these organs, the abso lute Revelator, began quite as low. If nomad Arabs of to-day can see in storm and stars sublime manifestations of one almighty personal power, why could not the nomadic Abel as well? If the Gospel messenger of to-day can cause the rudest Fijian to know God and to experience a sense of divine for

giveness and favor, why may not God's earliest preachers of righteousness have produced a like effect on sincere souls even before the discovery of the art of metal-working? Only let once the anthropological and sociological postulates demanded even by Herbert Spencer be granted, and the ancient historic conception of primitive monotheism becomes both possible and eminently reasonable. As an escape from the conflicting and mutually destructive theories of the evolutional school in its different departments, it presents, on merely speculative grounds, a positive attractiveness. Its full array of evidences, however, is simply co-extensive and identical with the evidences for the reality of Historic Revelation as a whole. Every thing which goes to show that God has intelligibly revealed himself to men at all, bears more or less directly upon the credibility of a revelation "in the beginning."

ART. III.-OUR PERIODICAL LITERATURE.

An Index to Periodical Literature. By WILLIAM FREDERICK POOLE, LL.D., with the assistance of WILLIAM I. FLETCHER. Royal Svo. Third Edition. Boston: James R. Osgood & Co. 1882.

In no department of our modern literature do we find a larger or more vigorous and healthy growth than in that of the periodical. To measure its full magnitude we must recognize the fundamental difference between the serial and the finished volume. In a work which reappears at regular intervals, whether it be by the day or the year, the purpose is all the same to speak again, and still again, and to keep on speaking, with a view to the new demands that come with each oscillation of the pendulum. But with the formal book the purpose is very different. The writer proposes to begin, and continue, and have done with, his undertaking, and then let it go out on its mission to the world. He may improve his work and prepare new editions, but it always contains an element of finality as a store-house of his thoughts. The periodical is the mouth-piece of confession, party, class, and tendency. It takes note of the passing currents, and expects immediate results from its work. It is the lance which the knight proposes to use in rapid gallop, not the heavy arms which must stand him

in good stead for an all-day encounter. The accumulation of this periodical matter is simply immense. The beginning is to be found in martial and thoughtful Venice, where, in 1531, the first modern periodical appeared as "La Gazetta," a name taken from the little local coin, which was the price of the fugitive sheet. The idea spread rapidly into other European countries, and now, after the lapse of three centuries and a half, we have a world of periodical literature, whose influence in shaping and quickening thought is beyond all computation..

The undertaking of Dr. Poole contemplated the classification of only the firmer and broader serials, the magazine proper, and not at all the mere newspaper. The growth of his idea touches upon the romance. While a student in Harvard, in 1848, and handling the books of the university library in his spare hours, he prepared his "Index to Subjects treated in Reviews and other Periodicals," a good pamphlet of one hundred and fifty-four pages. It awakened a taste, but did far more in revealing a need. Later, in 1853, his thin brochure grew into the Index to Periodical Literature," an octavo of over five hundred pages. The edition was limited, and was soon out of print. As early as 1864 the writer had no little difficulty in purchasing a copy, which he did, finally, when spending a day in the Boston Public Library, of the author himself, who was the librarian. For twenty years the book has been entirely out of the market. Now comes the new edition, the latest Index, an immense royal octavo of one thousand four hun dred and sixty-eight pages, in attractive print and double columns. Its place in literature is, and must remain, alone. The infant has at last become a man. The Preface, which

could with great propriety have been called the Introduction, recounts the story of the bibliographer's intense mania, of librarians in the Old and New World coming to his relief, and of his happy solution of the difficulties of his system of classification, and of the fulfillment of his dream in the present magnificent work. Every American may well congratulate himself upon the achievement. The periodical world is no longer a hopeless labyrinth, but an easy road in the broad noonday. One can easily find what has been written, in calm or passion, on any topic and in any magazine, by the mere turning of the leaves.

We can best measure the value of Dr. Poole's labors by taking a broad view of this field, which he has been the first to enter as both student and analyst. The rapid growth of the European periodical, from its humble origin beside a Venetian canal in the former half of the sixteenth century, to its present immense proportions, is a fair index of the activity of thought created by the Reformation. Our serial literature sprang into being simultaneously with Protestantism, the mother of both books and modern republics. Venice was at this very time in the throes of the religious revolution. The works of Luther and his coadjutors were not only circulated, but even printed, along the Grand Canal. Some little skill was needful to escape papal interdiction. For example, the "Loci Theologici" of Melanchthon-the Greek term into which he translated his name, after the usage of scholars, from his German name of Schwarzerd, or Black Earth-was translated into Italian, and published under the almost undistinguishable, but accurately Italianized, name of "I Principii della Theologia di Ippofilo de Terra Nigra." The war between the German Empire and Italy broke out in 1526, and in 1527 the imperial army sacked Rome itself, and for a long time occupied Naples.

With this army there was a large number of Protestants. They carried the reform south of the Alps, and the contagion spread into the Italian peoples.* We have positive proof that Melanchthon corresponded with the Venetian reformers in 1529, and that Modena was a Lutheran city.† In England we find the same singular coincidence between the beginning of periodical literature and the bitter conflict between Romanism and Protestantism. The fitting out of the Spanish Armada was regarded as an attack at once upon British liberty and the Protestant cause. At the very time when the Armada was tossing in the English Channel, in 1588, and the hopes of Rome were bright with the prospect of humiliated British reformers, the first periodical in the British islands saw the light. This was eighteen years after Pius V. excommunicated Elizabeth, one year after the execution of Mary Stuart, and just at the hour when papal anger was supreme at the firm

* Sarpi: Dans l'Italie même plusieurs personnes joûterent la nouvelle Réforme, Hist. du Concile de Trente, traduit par Caerager, vol. i, p. 85.

+ Citta Lutherana. Quirini, in Præf. to Poli Epistt. Tom. iii, p. 84.

Protestantism of Elizabeth and her ministry. The first German periodical was issued in Nuremberg. There is a number of it in the British Museum. Its title is "Newe Zeitung aus Hispanien und Italien." It is in black letter, and bears date of 1534. The description of this rare treasure is thus furnished by the catalogue :

A gazette of excessive rarity, which appears to have been printed at Nuremberg. It contains the first news of the discovery of Peru, and has remained unknown to all the bibliographers we have been able to consult. In it is announced that the governor of Panumya, (Panama,) in the Indies, has written to his Majesty (the Emperor Charles V.) that a ship had arrived from Peru with a letter from the Regent, Francisco Piscario, (Pizarro,) stating that he had disembarked and seized the country; that, with two hundred Spaniards, infantry and cavalry, he had embarked; that he had arrived at the lands of a great lord named Cassiko, who had refused peace, and attacked him; that the Spaniards had been victorious, and had seized five thousand castillions, pieces of gold, and twenty thousand marks of silver; and that they had drawn two millions in gold from the said Cassiko.

This is by nine months the earliest document known authenticating the conquest of Peru. The next publication we have was also in German, and printed in Cologne, by J. Bureich, entitled "Certain tidings of what has taken place in the month of September last past of this current year, 1596, in Spain, Portugal, and France." In 1590 a semi-annual publication was commenced in Germany. The following is the title of one of the numbers: "A True Description of all principal and noteworthy Histories which have taken place in Upper and Lower Germany, also in France, Italy, England, Spain, Hungary, Croatia, Poland, Sweden, Transylvania, Wallachia, Moldavia, Turkey, etc., between the last past Frankfort Lent-Fair and the present Autumn Fair of this year, 1595, gathered and drawn up from day to day, partly from personal knowledge, partly from credible writings, by Jacobus Francus." The true name of the author was Conrad Lauterbach; he was born in Thuringia in 1534, and died in Frankfort in 1597.

The American periodical was born of the strife of the colonist with the rude forces of his new life and the ruder despotism of Whitehall. What had he to say, at his distance, from the happenings of the Old World? But it mattered little to him