"The Supper of Beaucaire"--a judicious, sensible, and able essay,
intended to allay the agitation then existing in that city. A copy of it
was brought to him in later days, but seeing no advantage in reviving,
under the circumstances of a different time, a production written for a
temporary and local excitement, he ordered its suppression.

* * * * *

The Life of Calvin, by Paul Henry, has been translated from the German
by the Rev. Dr. Henry Stebbing, of London, and we have the first of the
two octavos of which it consists, from the press of Robert Carter &
Brothers. So much inexcusable ignorance, so much perverse
misrepresentation, so much insolent lying, may be found scattered
through modern literature, respecting the great Genevan, that Dr. Henry
deserves well the thanks of the christian world for exhibiting the chief
facts of his history, so plainly that every partisan knave who would
repeat the old slanders, shall be silent hereafter for very shame. John
Calvin was unquestionably subject to the infirmities of our human
nature; so was John Milton; but the inherent and indefectable greatness
of these two men was such, that they dwell apart like stars, in glory
scarcely approachable by mortal virtue or intelligence. John Calvin and
John Milton were in an extraordinary degree the authors of modern
institutions of liberty, and it would be difficult to decide which has
most merit of this praise. The late Albert Gallatin was wont to say that
when we celebrated our condition on the fourth of July, we should first
drink to the memory of John Calvin, and then to the immediate authors of
the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Gallatin did not hold to all the
dogmas of Calvin, but he could not speak of the creatures--like Dyer,
for example--who employ their pennyworth of wit to prejudice the vulgar
against him, without some signs of scorn. We can never forget his
merciless characterization of a malicious feeble-mind, who in a book
entitled _A Monograph of Moral Sense_, declared that Calvin never had
enough humanity in his nature to select even one verse by the
_Evangelists_ for pulpit illustration,--though the Reformer really
preached some folio volumes of commentaries upon the Gospels, preached
from them as much as he did from any other portion of the Bible. This
person--his name was Smith--was not more reckless of truth than it has
been the fashion for anti-Calvinists to be, when writing of tha