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the hands of "amateurs," in part at least-perhaps members of the society are indicated. The limitation of the percentage to sales "in the town" will be observed. Even at that time Bruges had gained a reputation for bay trees, which were in general demand on the Continent; those who have money enough may still buy specimens almost as old as 1700. To avoid interference with this trade perhaps transactions with the foreigner were excepted. The equivocal word "flowers" may have been chosen to cover dealings in plants as well.

At the same time, we learn, the society offered rewards for new plants and improved methods of culture; to this purpose the commission on sales was devoted probably, since the Guild had no income besides the trifling fines mentioned. In 1702 Antonius Verhulst, a member, introduced the potato, and put in his claim for the reward, which was admitted. We may feel surprise that the tuber had not reached Bruges at a much earlier date, if De l'Ecluse, the Viennese botanist, wrote in 1588 that it was so common in Italy as to be food for pigs. Then, as now, Belgium swarmed with priests, who should have been familiar with a vegetable so well known across the Alps. But it is more than likely that De l'Ecluse made a mistake; possible even that De Candolle, from whom I take the statement, misunderstood his letter. At any rate the people of Bruges could not be induced to eat potatoes. Poor Verhulst had to content himself with the reward. No one would buy his tubers, though offered in open market at a nominal price. A similar prejudice ruled elsewhere. Our Puritan forefathers rejected them because there is no reference to potatoes in the Bible so says Lord Morley. On the eve of the French Revolution Turgot could not persuade the starving people of the Limousin to try them; they thought an

epidemic of leprosy would follow. In the end, Verhulst distributed his stock among the few person who would accept such a dubious boon.

For all its good works the society languished once more. The list of members suggests a reason. Nearly all saving the clerics belonged to the rich bourgeosie, a class famed for love of banqueting everywhere, especially perhaps in Flanders. And meetings always ended with a feast. At any rate, the energetic minority proposed and carried another reconstruction in 1719. The name was changed. Saints had begun to lose something of their prestige, and the remodelled Confrérie took Flora for its patroness instead of Dorothea, Improved rules made it more business-like. Doubtless the members still attended service on St. Dorothea's Day, but the obligation was omitted. They had only to assemble at the Franc on February 5, with a significant addition, "zekeren luister," which means "in state"-full dress and carriage to visit one another's gardens in turn. Curious regulations follow. If in any garden the show of flowers did not come up to the mark the owner was fined a shilling. When we recall that the day was February 5, it must be assumed that every member had a forcing-pit and a conservatory to keep the blooms when open; for how many plants are in flower out of doors even now on February 5? But the conclusion is surprising. Of course it was Dutchmen, or Flemings, who invented glasshouses and discovered the art of forcing; that is, in modern times, for Roman gardeners must have been familiar with it when they bloomed roses at Christmas; and they learned from the Egyptians probably, if the report of Athenæus may be trusted. Philip Miller's book assures us that forcing was known even in England in his time. But Lady Mary Wortley Montagu must have been familar from

childhood with the greatest houses here, and the astonishment she expressed in 1716, when, dining with the King at Hanover, she was offered fruit out of season, shows how rare the process must have been. "I am surprised we do not practise such a useful innovation in England," Lady Mary wrote. But clergymen, merchants, and tradesmen in Bruges seem to have regarded it as a thing of course.

An odd rule authorized a member to demand that any plant in a colleague's garden which struck his fancy during the inspection should be put up to auction then and there, and sold to the highest bidder. Probably this has some bearing on another rule, more extraordinary still. "A member who keeps any flower after two yearly visits of the Confrérie shall pay a fine of two escallings." No explanation is forthcoming.

Up to this time members had not been asked for a subscription. But in 1709 twenty penninges were demanded; three years later, five schellingen-2.70 francs. Doubtless that sum represented twice its value now, but for men who could make a good show of flowers on February 5 it seems rather absurd. The reluctance of Belgians to part with their cash is an hereditary characteristic. Moreover, half the subscription became due in winter, half in summer.

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From this date till 1803 the records are lost, which may be taken to signify that the Confrérie declined again gradually-in zeal, if not in numbers-and for the old cause-its feasts attracted men little interested in horticulture. may have been a superstitious hope of restoring the good old time which led members to dismiss the heathen Flora and return to the cult of Dorothea in 1803; but they dropped the "Saint" and the French title, calling themselves Confraters van Dorothea. There is a hint of political changes in each case.

So the abandonment of the altar of the Franc for a "stage" in the Magdalen Chapel of St. Catherine's church has its significance probably. Henceforward every member had to exhibit four plants, "decorative" perhaps, or four in flower, each in its own pot, on February 5, paying 11⁄2d. for every one short of this number. Kind fortune has preserved a catalogue of the show in 1804. The lots were 189: to wit, 159 bulbs (hyacinths, narcissus, and crocus), six iris, five China roses, nine hepaticas, two cyclamens, one daphne, two jasmines, one auricula, one soldanella, two solanums, two laurustinus, five urticas-all without specific names. Also a cactus, a thaulus (? trollius) and a muguetboom (? lily of the valley).

Next year occurs the first suggestion of prizes-a silver medal offered by the president for the best ranunculus. It was not awarded. Then the vice-president gave a silver medal for the best plant forced and the best grown tulip. Catalogues are extant from 1806.

But it was not to be supposed that in a land so devout the omission of Dorothea's claim to sanctity would be accepted without protest. The malcontents did not secede, but they started an exhibition of their own in the church of St. Sauveur. Therefore the majority resolved, as a compromise, that the name should be changed once more. Bruggsche Maatschappij van Flora was chosen; the badge, representing a rose, is highly valued at the present day.

We have reached and passed the date when our own Royal Horticultural Society was launched, a hundred and sixty years at least after its Flemish rival. But the latter has gone under five names, if not more. For in 1828 it became the Société Provinciale d'Horticulture et Botanique de la Flandre Occidentale-a title to conjure with, surely. Nevertheless, only four members remained in 1858. At length, one

might say, the ancient Confrérie was doomed. But the announcement of the danger saved it. The amateurs of Bruges, a host, hurried to the rescue, and started it afresh, as the Société The Cornhill Magazine.

Royale d'Horticulture et Arboriculture. Under that renowned appellation it flourishes like one of its own bay trees, after two centuries and a half of the varied fortune I have sketched. Frederick Boyle.

CALVIN.

BY THE DEAN OF RIPON.

the prosecution of Servetus, the eminent physicist, which led to his condemnation as an Arian and to his death by burning. It may be as well, therefore, to touch at once upon these two points.

To-morrow the City of Geneva will cal position, or else as the author of celebrate the 400th anniversary of the birth of Calvin, the founder of its constitution, ecclesiastical and civil, the man who made its name a power throughout the civilized world. It will call upon all who sympathize with the Reformation to join in honoring his memory. A monument is to be placed against the remaining portion of the old city walls, with statues of Calvin and the principal reformers, facing a fine promenade. On Sunday there will be special services, and on the following days receptions and expeditions on the lake, the whole centring round the laying of the first stone of the monument on Tuesday, and a commemorative visit to the University founded as a college by Calvin. Deputations have been sent from all parts of the world, that from England having been organized by a committee presided over by the Dean of Canterbury. But, though the size and composition of this Committee, which includes bishops and representatives of the various churches and members of both houses of Parliament, prove that there are many eminent men amongst us by whom the memory of the Reformer is honored, yet Calvin is not, we imagine, appreciated by us as regards the most important and enduring parts of his work. He is known to most men either simply in connection with the doctrine which bears his name, and which is taken abstractedly and in its harshest sense, apart from its histori

No one would, at the present day, seek to justify the burning of heretics; but in the 15th and 16th centuries it was not only the established custom, as the English Statute De Hæretico Comburendo shows, but an Act of Faith, as it was called in Spain. Calvin, who was bound by law, as the head of the Company of Pastors, to bring before the magistrates of Geneva a man who had already been condemned in France, pleaded before judges who had less inclination to leniency, and could not even prevail on them to substitute decapitation for burning. It would be useless to deny Calvin's complicity; but the strange thing is that, while in the case of other great men such things as this are overlooked, this one act of Calvin's has been allowed to besmirch his whole character. No one remembers against Sir Thomas More that he brought heretics without number to their doom, or thinks of Cranmer as writing of Frith, on whom he had sat in judgment, and who was condemned merely on the question of Transubstantiation, that "he would go in a few days to the fire." Surely in Calvin's case we may blame the age rather than the man: the time of toleration was not yet.

But those who are now honoring Calvin have honored Servetus also, and have set up an expiatory monument on the place where he was burned.

It may be said truly that this act followed naturally from the extreme manner in which Calvin asserted the doctrine of Predestination. But here also he should be judged as we judge of St. Augustin, whose influence is largely responsible for these extreme views: and, what is more important, we must consider what gave so much importance to the doctrine of the Divine Sovereignty at the time of the Reformation. The Reformers were engaged in a life-and-death struggle against such things as indulgence and the worship of relics and of saints. For resisting these Huss had been burned and Luther banned. Here, they said, are inventions of men, by which the Christian conscience has been perverted, but which are enforced as necessary truth. We demand, they said, that "the whole of this rubbish should be carted away," and that there should be a return to the teaching of the New Testament: neither the Pope nor any other human power can we obey: God, not man, must be supreme. This great conviction was the strength of their position. It is true that, when translated into predestination, the doctrine was urged to the point of extravagance, though hardly further than it had been urged by St. Augustin, and that the idea of Reprobation, at which Calvin himself stood aghast, and spoke of it as a Decretum horribile (meaning, however, an awful, not horrible, decree) is a monstrous one, although the reformed churches in Holland, Scotland, and America have only of late years struggled out of it. It is true also that the more modified form of Predestination -that of Election-was misunderstood, being taken as a blessing to the person elected instead of as a call, as

LIVING AGE. VOL. XLIV. 2304

St. Paul expressed it, "to be conformed to the image of the Son"—that is, a call to pre-eminence in work and in suffering for the good of mankind. But the consciousness of God's Sovereignty has always been a fortifying power to those who have received it. Look at Coligny in France, or Maurice in the Netherlands, or the best of the Puritans in England, or Jonathan Edwards in America, and you will feel that Calvinism has been the parent of strong men.

And Calvin himself was emphatically a strong man, strong through the wisdom and courage which result from faith and righteousness. Renan said of him that he was the most Christian man of his generation. Hooker, while opposing some of the deductions of the Puritans from his system, says: "For my part, I think him incomparably the wisest man that ever the French Church hath enjoyed since she enjoyed him." He found Geneva a small, weak commonwealth, which had just freed itself from the power of a Prince Bishop and had embraced the Reformation, but turbulent, fickle, and corrupt. He left it, at his death, after little more than twenty years' work, a well-ordered city, with institutions which lasted almost down to the present time, and described by those who visited it as a City of God.

The centre of all his authority was the enforcement of Christian morality, and his weapon of discipline was excommunication. He would rather die than admit evil livers to the Communion. This was resented at first, and Geneva, with its party of Libertines, was in the condition of Florence when Savonarola was opposed by the Arrabbiati. Calvin was exiled to Strasburg; but, after two years, he was entreated to return to Geneva, and he returned to reign. He settled the constitution, with its Greater and Lesser Council and its governing Cab

inet, but at their side he placed the Consistory and the Company of Pastors, who had a right to be heard when any law was proposed. He divided the City into districts for the care of the poor, under voluntary Hospitallers, and made provision for the instruction of all the citizens in religious knowledge. And all this was done under the sanction of religion. No one could be a citizen without giving his assent to the doctrines of the Catechism which Calvin had prepared at the beginning of his work. This Catechism is, like that of the Church of England, a simple exposition of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer, the Decalogue, and the Sacraments. There is no "Calvinism" in it, although when it was composed Calvin had already published his great theological work, the Institutes. To this demand for Christian conformity Rousseau submitted when he claimed his citizenship in 1754, and he defends it by saying that the confession of faith is the expression of the universal Gospel.

The activity of Calvin in every part of his work was extraordinary. He was a most diligent pastor: he preached and lectured assiduously.

The Commentaries on almost the whole of the Bible, which he at times labored at all through the night, are far in advance of those of his time; indeed, of almost all until the modern critical era: they are human, direct, practical. Compare, for instance, his treatment of the "Servant of the Lord" in the seond part of Isaiah with that given in the "Speaker's Commentary" as late as 1875, and you can hardly doubt that the superiority rests with Calvin.

There can be no doubt that Calvin's character was austere and inflexible; but there seems to have been nothing morose about it. He inspired affection as well as respect, and at times he showed a touching humility, as when,

in a time of controversy with Luther, he exchanged greetings with his great antagonist, and said that, even if Luther should call him a devil, he would never cease from owning him as a true servant of God. He was fond of society, so far as his work allowed time for it: he had been known in his early days for his wit and vivacity, and in later years he would play quoits and bowls: nor did he join in the wholesale condemnation of the theatre by some of his brother ministers.

His immense influence also was used on the whole in the cause of moderation, as may be seen in his dealings with England if we contrast them with the demands of the Puritans in the next generation. Though a Presbyterian, he refused to condemn the Episcopal system in England-each church, he held, must settle its own government. His advice was given in favor of the alterations made by the second Prayer Book of Edward VI.; but, when the exiles at Frankfort during the reign of Queen Mary consulted him as to attempts to go further, he recommended them to desist: the things they wished to expunge, he said, might be foolish, but they could be accepted-they were "tolerabiles ineptiæ." He would not even condemn the use of wafer-bread in the Sacrament where the people were attached to it. He constantly refers to the works of the Fathers, and even of the Schoolmen he speaks in gentler terms than those used by Bacon-they were trying, he said, to reason out their faith. His letters to sovereigns and other leading persons were received with great respect, especially those to our Edward VI. and Elizabeth; even so moderate a man as Archbishop Parker entreated him to write frequently to the Queen.

In other Protestant countries Calvin was a power of the first magnitude,

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