BOOKS.

ALEXANDER VINET.* VINET was not only a fine critic and man of letters ; he was also a theologian of deep spiritual insight, whose comprehen- siveness and breadth of charity led him to be regarded in some respects as unorthodox. His humility and diffidence frequently hindered his worldly prospects ; and as his mind was always open to the reception of new truths or new aspects of truth, he lacked the consistency of men whose ideas are stereotyped. Dr. Fanur points out with truth that "a man who has received the homage of writers so different from each other in all their sympathies as De Wette, Victor Hugo, Chateaubriand, and Amiel, could have been no common man." We are reminded, too, that he was the friend of Erskine of Linlathen, and also of Sainte- Beuve, and that one of his works made a profound im- pression on F. D. Maurice. The editor states that the soarce of most of the incidents in these pages is Rambert's " master- piece of biography." That his volumes should have been largely consulted was inevitable, but we think Miss Lane follows Rambert and other authorities too closely, and quotes them too frequently, instead of forming from these ample materials an independent narrative. The result is, that the Life is a little patchy, and also that more knowledge is demanded of religious controversies in Switzerland than an English reader is likely to possess. This is a defect from a literary point of view, but it does not materially lessen the value of the biography.

In noticing the volume, we shall try chiefly to give a picture of Vinet's personal life, while avoiding as far as possible any

• The Life and Writings of Alexander Vinet. By Laura M. Lane. With an Introduction by the Von. F. W. Farrar, D.D. Edinburgh : Clark. 1890.

account of the controversies in which he took a part. Vinet was more of a thinker than a polemical writer, more of a man of letters than of action, and without in the least disparaging his public services, he is, we think, most attractive in his private character. It may be true, as the writer says, that the "Pascal of Protestantism" cannot be studied apart from the revival of religion in the Canton of Vaud, but at the same time, a slight sketch of Vinet may be given that will be true as far as it goes.

He was born at Lausanne in 1797, and seems throughout his childhood and youth to have suffered too much from parental discipline. "Duty and submission were the watch- words of the household. Pleasure and frivolity were unknown. Even when Alexander was a tall schoolboy, he was obliged to wear the clumsy garments made by a village tailor, while his father undertook the office of barber, shaving his child's hair so close that his appearance excited the ridicule of his comrades." Both parents are said to have loved their children dearly, but they ruled by fear ; and Alexander, a highly sensitive child, suffered accordingly. As a child, he trembled at the sound of his father's step, and, it is said, never succeeded to his dying day in overcoming a timidity that he bitterly deplored. His father expected little from the nervous boy, but he soon gave marks of ability, and, like many youths with a turn for literature, wrote verses. In appearance he is said to have been ungainly, and with strongly marked features ; but " it sufficed to see him smile, to hear his voice, to be surprised by his glance, to divine a sensibility which was almost feminine in its charm." Vinet was too readily overmastered by feeling in those youthful days, and we are told that on reading aloud a passage from Corneille, he threw down the book and rushed from the room. " When his friends went in search of him, he was found sobbing on his bed." At the early age of twenty, he was appointed Professor of Languages and of Literature in the Gymnasium of Basle, and for a time felt himself an exile. Two years later, having been in the meantime ordained, he married a cousin to whom he had been long attached, and in spite of great poverty, found in that marriage " the sweet fulfilment of the sweetest of dreams." At this time, while the pecuniary reward was small, the labour was incessant. He was studying theology, studying Greek, lecturing on French literature, translating from the German, and taking an interest and share in public affairs. In the first quarter of the century, religious freedom was not better understood at Basle than it was two hundred years before in England ; and Vinet, who loved liberty as much as life, was listened to in vain. And now his health gave way ; and a painful operation proving unsuccessful, he was doomed to suffer for the rest of his days. It was at this time he read Erskine's Reflections on the Intrinsic Evidence of Christianity, and the book left a pro- found impression. He recommended it to his friends, and a little later on began to learn English, in order to read Erskine in the original. Vinet, by-the-way, in his early study of the Bible, seems to have anticipated the views of Coleridge in the Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit ; and in observing that the action of Biblical personages is not our rule of life, he alludes as Coleridge did afterwards to the infamous conduct of Jael.

In 1831, Basle was in a political ferment, and a new Consti- tution promised liberty to the people. " We are now given over to liberty," Vinet wrote, and are "brought face to face with either a great privilege or a great danger. Your liberty —do not forget this fact—will be worth just that which you are worth yourselves." To him it seemed passing strange that these aspirations for political freedom did not include liberty of worship. The publication of an essay on the subject, and of the Chrestomathie Francaise, a work highly praised by Sainte-Beuve, made Vinet's name famous. Several offers reached him of honourable and lucrative appointments, but he declined them on the ground of incapacity, saying that the little power he possessed required to be nursed in solitude. " I do not know anything well," he wrote ; " I am an ignoramus with a smattering of science. Add to this the incurable dis- advantage of my character, the absence of presence of mind, of accuracy of perception, of firmness, and of logic. The practical element is absolutely lacking. I only know after the event what ought to have been done." That Vinet was sincere in undervaluing his capacity cannot be questioned; but this self-depreciation, partly due, no doubt, to physical causes, lessened his range of influence. With a mind always active, Vinet's life " was one of continuous struggle against the ravages of a painful malady." His articles in the Semeur, a Parisian journal of which he was offered the editorship, attracted the notice of Victor Hugo and of ChAteaubriand, and won for him the friendship of hnile Souvestre. Probably no man of high mark had less cause to complain that his powers were not appreciated. After refusing offers far more tempting in a pecuniary sense, Vinet in 1837 accepted the Chair of Practical Theology at the Academy of Lausanne, where he was heartily welcomed. " The effect," Rambert writes, "produced by Vinet's inaugural address was immense.

It was spoken of as an event. The Canton of Vaud had been flooded by itinerant preachers from Geneva and from England, who compromised the holiness of their cause by narrow views and vulgar affectations On seeing Vinet afford the example of a simple natural faith, and display the grace of good sense, more than one drooping heart took courage."

His conscientiousness was sometimes overstrained, and his proposal to renounce the emoluments of his office made his wife shudder, as well it might. Then Vinet was beset with doubts as to his spiritual state and his fitness as a Professor of Theology. His extreme bodily weakness affected his mind, and a letter written soon after he reached Lausanne proves, as the biographer justly says, " that theological doubts can exist side by side with an intensely religious inner life." Vinci believed in a creed as essential to the existence of a Church, and when in 1839 the Helvetic Confession was abolished as the creed of the Vaudois Church, he wrote :-

" The Church, not being represented by its symbol, no longer exists. Religion becomes purely and simply a department of the Administration, a branch, if you like, of public instruction. The abolition of the Creed is alike prejudicial to peace and to liberty. When this is suppressed, nothing remains, and one must summon courage to say to a free people, ' You had a Church ; we have sup- pressed it.' Nothing remains but parishes, buildings, black coats, and a budget to keep all going."

Vinet, who, while belonging to the National Church, advo-

cated the separation of Church and State, had his views strengthened when the Grand Council in Lausanne " arrogated sovereign authority in spiritual matters, and the pastors were placed under the direct control of the Municipalities."

Miss Lane, who, as we have said, quotes largely from Ram- bert's biography of Vinet, gives a long and very interesting extract descriptive of his life at Lausanne, from which we select the following passage :—

"Among Vinet's correspondents must be numbered most of the men of letters—poets, thinkers and journalists—of Paris. He had no need to travel to see the world, for the world came to him. He was the foremost representative of a form of Christianity which is everywhere in a minority, but which nevertheless every- where exists, and which, instead of applying itself to the externals of life, penetrates and raises it to the height of the ideal. People came to him, just as in the Middle Ages souls which hungered and thirsted after righteousness haunted the solitudes of illustrious penitents. Among others was a Russian Prince, with whom he made a long study of some of the books of the New Testament. Then came students from German Switzer- land who, not content with following his lectures, brought him every week a new composition, and received the preceding essay corrected, annotated, sometimes almost rewritten."

In his lighter hours, Vinci was a charming companion.

" Surrounded," Miss Lane writes, " by a few chosen friends, he could laugh, expand, and charm his listeners by his gaiety.

Vinet's talk was that of a man of taste. He did not preach, he conversed. He was guiltless of the affectation which leads some devout persons to talk of nothing but devotion. He feared that self-love had a great deal to do with the matter ; and in the unrestraint of familiar conversation he preferred to turn towards literature, art, poetry, in which every one can bear a part ' What would you go first to see in Paris ?' inquired a lady renowned for her severe form of piety. Rachel,' was Vinet's calm reply."

At length the Professor's position in the Chair of Theology became intolerable, for while he advocated the widest liberty in all matters of conscience, the Grand Council of Lausanne was engaged in forging fresh chains for the clergy of the National Church. Vinet therefore resigned his post, saying that he was " never more firmly attached to the Church of his country than at the moment that he ceased to be numbered among its functionaries." At the same time the Chair of Literature became vacant, and this, on the ground of his European reputation, Vinet was called to fill. In the new position, he could give scope to his extensive knowledge and fine taste, and at the same time lead the movement that ended in the formation of a Free Church, not, however, before the Council of State in the Canton of Vaud had declared that the union of Church and State implied the subordination of the Church to the State. In the new Church he now preached often, and his superiority as a preacher is said to have been " more marked than in all the other spheres of his activity." Miss Lane translates copious extracts from his sermons, an unnecessary labour perhaps, since two or three volumes of Vinet's discourses appeared in an English dress more than forty years ago.

In his .trines sur Blaise Pascal, Vinet wrote with an ardour and sympathy that gave wings to his thought, and it appears to have been one of the latest subjects that occupied his mind. His intellect was still active when the body was worn out, and we are told that he worked in his bed. As a last resource, he was carried to Clarens for change of air, where he occupied a room in which Byron is said to have written the third canto of Childe Harold, and there, surrounded by friends and lovingly tended by his wife, he died on May 4th, 1847. Time has not in any degree lessened the value of Vinet's works. Beautiful in style, profound and at the same time lucid in thought, they deserve a far wider recognition in this country than they have hitherto received.