into the background, and an entirely changed aspect of public affairs was to be ushered in. America was undiscovered; the hidden treasures of Mexico and Peru undreamed of. The Moors still retained possession of the most valuable portion of Spain. The Hanseatic League was in the fulness of its strength, but showed incipient signs of decline. The Russian empire was then, like the great Sahara of Africa now, a land unknown and untrodden by civilised man. The Prussian States, as now constituted, were only looming in the distance. Poland was strong and powerful; and Hungary the outward bulwark of Christendom. Constantinople, though tottering at its base, was still in the hands of the Greeks. Henry V. was king of England, and a part of France belonged to his crown. The bloody struggles and contests between the Houses of York and Lancaster had not commenced. The old Norman nobility were still powerful vassals of the king, and displayed all their feudal power and grandeur. The commercial and manufacturing cities of Holland and Belgium were in full vigour; enjoying, to the utmost extent, their somewhat rude and general freedom; and the republics of Italy monopolised all the trade of India and the East. At the head of these was Venice—the Queen and City of Waters—with her unbounded commerce and wealth, and her mysterious government; a city, which our great bard of Avon thus describes :

"Your mind is tossing on the ocean;

There, where your argosies with portly sail,
Like signiors, and rich burghers of the flood,
Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,

Do over-peer the petty traffickers

That curt'sy to them, do them reverence,
As they fly by them with their woven wings."

Such was the general aspect of the world at the commencement of the series of sketches we are now about to offer on the writings of the great expounders of European politics; writings which contain principles never to be effaced from the minds of mankind to the end of time.

CHAPTER II.

POLITICAL LITERATURE OF GREAT BRITAIN, FROM 1400 TILL THE YEAR 1700.

SECTION I.

From Henry V. to the termination of the reign of
Elizabeth.

FROM the commencement of the fifteenth to the termination of the seventeenth century, the political literature of Great Britain is particularly interesting; interesting on account of its intrinsic merits as a development of the entire science of politics; and interesting on account of the fearful struggles it had to make, and the personal sacrifices it demanded from its expounders. When we cast a retrospective glance over this portion of our national history, and contrast it with subsequent periods of it, it presents a stern and gloomy aspect. Every general principle was contested in the midst of blood and suffering; men having often to contend against error and oppression, with the pen in one hand and the sword in the other. Every step of this literary progress calls forth the most thrilling emotions; and pointedly shows what a deep and absorbing interest the love of truth can

exercise over the noblest and most highly gifted intellects. Such a fact conveys an impressive lesson to all succeeding ages.

From the reign of Henry IV. to Henry VIII., commencing in 1399 and extending to 1509, there were no political works of a scientific class produced in England worthy of much notice. In the chief seats of education, general polity was sometimes dwelt upon; but what was here publicly taught, or published in written class-books, was chiefly borrowed from the stores of the scholastic writers of preceding times; and consisted of illustrations of a few maxims of civil law, remarks on the ancient systems of government in Greece and Rome, and some incidental notice of the politics of the Saxon and Norman dynasties.

A popular political feeling began, however, to manifest itself in England soon after the commencement of the fifteenth century. English books began to be written, particularly against the Roman hierarchy. There was one publication, called "The Lantern of Light," (1415) which excited much attention. It represented the pope as antichrist, and maintained the papal decrees were of no authority or force. It represented the archbishops and bishops as the seats of the great beast in the Revelations, who sat and governed despotically. The Roman courts were his head, the mass of the clergy his body, and the friars, monks, and canons, his tail. The work enforces the great truth, that the christian laity were maltreated and persecuted from two principal sources-the excess of temporal power in the hands of the church, and the system of begging among the friars. This work, it is said, was found in the house of a feltmonger, plainly

written in English, and neatly bound in red leather. The person who had it could not read, but had it read to him; and so wedded was he to the truths it contained, that he suffered a confinement in Conway Castle for two years, and in the Fleet prison other three years, rather than abandon his creed. Wickliff's tracts, belonging to Sir John Oldcastle, were seized in 1413, in Paternoster Row, and taken to Henry V., at Kensington Palace, who, after reading a few pages of them, expressed his horror at the doctrines they contained. There was another work of much the same character, found at Coventry; and, indeed, works of this description became so common, that the public authorities, when persons were arrested, invariably asked them, "whether they ever had in their houses or custody any books written in English?"

There were several learned men opposed the reform doctrines, promulgated by Wickliffe and his followers. The chief of these were Thomas Ashburn, Bankins, an eloquent Dominican friar, Richard Maydesley, and William Woodford. And, in addition to these individual efforts to repress a political change of opinion, the University of Oxford, appointed twelve magisters to examine the works of Wickliffe; and in 1412, decided that there were two hundred and sixty-seven erroneous and heretical conclusions in them, all of which were "guilty of fire."

Thomas Netter, of Waldon, was the most able and systematic writer on the ecclesiastical and civil claims of the papacy. His work is called "Doctrinale," &c., in three volumes folio; and has often been reprinted since, at Paris, Salamanca, and Venice.

Political authorship, was at this period, a perilous