All his friends what steps to take against an obstinate heretic." trembled at this undisguised declaration. Luther repeated: "So help me God! I can retract nothing." Upon this he was dismissed, then recalled, and again asked whether he would retract a part of what he had written. "I have no other answer to make," was his reply. The Italians and Spaniards were amazed. Luther was told the diet would come to a decision the next day. When returning to his inn he quieted the anxious multitude with a few words, who, seeing the Spaniards and Italians of the emperor's household follow him with imprecations and threats, exclaimed loudly, in the apprehension that he was about to be conducted to prison. The elector and other princes now saw it was their duty to protect such a man, and sent their ministers to assure him of their support. The next day the emperor declared, "He could not allow that a single monk should disturb the peace of the Church, and he was resolved to let him depart, under condition of creating no trouble; but he would proceed against his adherents as against heretics who are under excommunication, and interdict them by all means in his power; and he demanded of the estates of the empire to conduct themselves as faithful Christians." This address, the suggestion of the Italian and Spanish party, created great commotion. The most violent members of that party demanded of the emperor that Luther should be burned and his ashes thrown into the Rhine, and it is now proved that toward the end of his life Charles reproached himself bitterly for not having thus sacrificed his word for the good of the Church. But the great majority of the German party, even Luther's personal enemies, rejected such a proposition with horror, as unworthy of the good faith of Germans. Some said openly, they had a child, misled by foreigners, for an emperor. The emperor decided at last that three days should be given to Luther to reconsider what he had said. The theologians began to try their skill upon him. "Give up the Bible as the last appeal; you allow all heresies have come from the Bible." Luther reproached them for their unbelief, and added: "The pope is not judge in the things that belong to the Word of God; every Christian man must see and understand himself how he is to live and to die." Two more days were granted, without producing any other result than Luther's declaration, "I am ready to renounce the safe-conduct, to deliver my life and body into the hands of the emperor, but the Word of God, never! I am also ready to accept a council, but one which shall judge only after the Scripture." "What remedy can you then name?» asked the venerable archbishop of Treves. "Only that indicated by Gamaliel," replied Luther; "if this council or this work be of men, it will come to naught; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it, lest haply ye be found even to fight against God." From an essay on "Luther.» EDMUND BURKE (1729-1797) DMUND BURKE'S essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful» shows everywhere the unmistakable inspiration of the genius which made him one of the greatest men of modern times. It is sometimes criticized as unscientific by those who subject its theories of the beautiful to severe analysis, but it is equally safe to assert that from the time of Longinus to the close of the nineteenth century, every attempt made to define "the efficient causes of the Sublime and Beautiful" is, in the nature of things, a failure, being in its essence a part of the impossibility of limiting the Absolute and defining the Infinite. "When I say I intend to inquire into the efficient cause of Sublimity and Beauty," writes Burke, "I would not be understood to say that I can come to the ultimate cause. I do not pretend that I shall ever be able to explain why certain affections of the body produce such a distinct emotion of mind, and no other; or why the body is at all affected by the mind, or the mind by the body. A little thought will show this to be impossible." What Burke did undertake was to examine into the relations between emotion due to sensation and the operations of the higher intellect. If he does not demonstrate a single proposition, we need not concern ourselves with his failure, nor need we regret it. Burke at his best is no more logical than Shakespeare. His essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful" is as much a work of genius as "The Tempest," but "The Tempest" proves nothing, except that there is such a reality as genius capable of "taking hold on the skirts of the infinite." When the vibratory theory of light and of force, operating in co-relation with light and heat through the whole universe, is so well defined that the relations between color and music, tone and light, the melody of a poem and the spectrum of a rainbow, can be clearly defined, the mind which insists on scientific definition will be better prepared to define Burke's failures. In the meantime, we have the privilege of studying the operation of his great intellect in the essay he intended to make its master work,- an essay nowhere unworthy of the genius which shows at once its modesty and its power in the conclusion that "the great chain of causes, which links one to another, even to the throne of God himself, can rever be unraveled by any industry of ours." Burke was born in Dublin, January 12th, 1729. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, he studied law and began the work as a writer which would have made him famous even if he had not found opportunity to develop his genius for oratory. From the time he made his first speech in Parliament in 1766 until he had achieved his great triumph in the impeachment of Warren Hastings, it became more and more apparent that the English-speaking world had in him its greatest orator. That eminence is still his, nor does it seem likely that he will ever be supplanted. His most noted writings beside the essay on the "Sublime and Beautiful" (A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, 1756), are his "Reflections on the Revolution in France" (1790), his "Thoughts on the Causes of the Present Discontents" (1770), and his "Letters on a Regicide Peace» (1796-97). He died at Beaconsfield, England, July 8th, 1797. Ο THE PRINCIPLES OF GOOD TASTE NA Superficial view we may seem to differ very widely from each other in our reasonings, and no less in our pleasures; but notwithstanding this difference, which I think to be rather apparent than real, it is probable that the standard both of reason and taste is the same in all human creatures. For if there were not some principles of judgment as well as of sentiment common to all mankind, no hold could possibly be taken either on their reason or their passions sufficient to maintain the ordinary correspondence of life. It appears indeed to be generally acknowledged that with regard to truth and falsehood there is something fixed. We find people in their disputes continually appealing to certain tests and standards, which are allowed on all sides, and are supposed to be established in our common nature. But there is not the same obvious concurrence in any uniform or settled principles which relate to taste. It is even commonly supposed that this delicate and aërial faculty, which seems too volatile to endure even the chains of a definition, cannot be properly tried by any test, nor regulated by any standard. There is so continual a call for the exercise of the reasoning faculty, and it is so much strengthened by perpetual contention, that certain maxims of right reason seem to be tacitly settled amongst the most ignorant. The learned have improved on this rude science and reduced those maxims into a system. If taste has not been so happily cultivated, it was not that the subject was barren, but that the laborers were few or negligent; for to say the truth, there are not the same interesting motives to impel us to fix the one which urge us to ascertain the other. And after all, if men differ in their opinion concerning such matters, their difference is not attended with the same important consequences; else I make no doubt but that the logic of taste, if I may be allowed the expression, might very possibly be as well digested, and we might come to discuss matters of this nature with as much certainty as those which seem more immediately within the province of mere reason. And, indeed, it is very necessary, at the entrance into such an inquiry as our present, to make this point as clear as possible; for if taste has no fixed principles, if the imagination is not affected according to some invariable and certain laws, our labor is like to be employed to very little purpose; as it must be judged a useless, if not an absurd undertaking, to lay down rules for caprice, and to set up for a legislator of whims and fancies. The term taste, like all other figurative terms, is not extremely accurate; the thing which we understand by it is far from a simple and determinate idea in the minds of most men, and it is therefore liable to uncertainty and confusion. I have no great opinion of a definition, the celebrated remedy for the cure of this disorder. For when we define, we seem in danger of circumscribing nature within the bounds of our own notions, which we often take up by hazard, or embrace on trust, or form out of a limited and partial consideration of the object before us, instead of extending our ideas to take in all that nature comprehends, according to her manner of combining. We are limited in our inquiry by the strict laws to which we have submitted at our setting out. Circa vilem patulumque morabimur orbem, A definition may be very exact, and yet go but a very little way towards informing us of the nature of the thing defined; but let the virtue of a definition be what it will, in the order of things, it seems rather to follow than to precede our inquiry, of which it ought to be considered as the result. It must be acknowledged that the methods of disquisition and teaching may be sometimes different, and on very good reason undoubtedly; but |