Whether this application was successful or not, even the industry of

the editor has not discovered, but we fear that, at this point of his

history, Nelson's recommendation was of no great weight with the

Admiralty. His biographers, indeed, Clarke and M'Arthur, say, that at

this time the treatment he received disgusted him with his

profession, and that he had even determined never to set his foot

again on board a king's ship, but resign his commission at once. But

Sir Harris Nicolas very justly is sceptical as to the truth of this

anecdote, from the fact, that there is no allusion to any intention of

the kind in his correspondence. And from what we see of his

disposition in all his letters, we feel assured that a thought of

leaving the navy never entered his mind, and that he would have

considered the withdrawal of his services as little short of treason.

But there occurred now a long interval of idleness, or at least of

life ashore. The Boreas was paid off in December 1787, and he was only

appointed to the Agamemnon in January 1793.

The four years of peace passed happily away, principally at Burnham

with his father; and there is little to quote till we find him on his

own element again. He writes to Hercules Ross, a West India merchant,

with whom he had formed a steady friendship while on that station; and

we adduce the passage as a further corroboration of Sir Harris

Nicolas's doubts about the authenticity of Clarke and M'Arthur's

anecdote.

"You have given up all the toils and anxieties of business,

whilst I must still buffet the waves--in search of what? That

thing called honour, is now, alas, thought of no more. My

integrity cannot be mended, I hope; but my fortune, God knows,

has grown worse for the service. So much for serving my country.

But the devil, ever willing to tempt the virtuous, (pardon this

flattery of myself,) has made me offer, if any ships should be

sent to destroy his majesty of Morocco's ports, to be there; and

I have some reason to think that, should any more come of it, my

humble services will be accepted. I have invariably laid down,

and followed close, a plan of what ought to be uppermost in the

breast of an officer; that it is much better to serve an

ungrateful country, than to give up his own fame. Posterity will

do him justice; a uniform conduct of honour and integrity seldom

fails of bringing a man to the goal of fame at last."

But in spite of the coolness of the jacks-in-office, and the cold

shoulder they turned to the little troublesome captain in the time of

peace, no sooner were we likely to come to loggerheads with the

French, than they turned their eyes to the quiet Norfolk parsonage,

and made the _amende_ to the _iracundus Achilles_.

War with France was declared on the 11th of February 1793, and on the

7th of January, Nelson writes as follows:--

To Mrs Nelson.

"_Post nubila Phoebus._ After clouds comes sunshine. The

Admiralty so smile on me, that really I am as much surprised as

when they frowned. Lord Chatham yesterday made many apologies for

not having given me a ship before this time, and said, that if I

chose to take a sixty-four to begin with, I should be appointed

to one as soon as she was ready, and whenever it was in his

power, I should be removed into a seventy-four. Every thing

indicated war. One of our ships looking into Brest, has been

fired into; the shot is now at the Admiralty. You will send my

father this news, which I am sure will please him.--Love to

Josiah, and believe me, your most affectionate

"Horatio Nelson."

The appointment of Nelson to the Agamemnon, a name which he did nearly

as much to immortalize as Homer, is the great epoch of his

professional life. But though his letters, which now rise to the rank

of despatches, become more interesting to those who watch his progress

as an officer, there are comparatively fewer which let us into the

character of the man. Besides this, the incidents of his career after

this time are so well known, that little new can be expected. What

novelty, however, there was to be obtained has not escaped the

research of the editor, from whom (till we meet him in another volume,

when Nelson will again become interesting in his individual capacity,

as his secret and confidential letters in the Carraccioli and Lady

Hamilton's period, come to be laid before us) we part with feelings of

gratitude and respect.

GUIZOT.

Machiavel was the first historian who seems to have formed a

conception of the philosophy of history. Before his time, the

narrative of human events was little more than a series of

biographies, imperfectly connected together by a few slight sketches

of the empires on which the actions of their heroes were exerted. In

this style of history, the ancient writers were, and to the end of

time probably will continue to be, altogether inimitable. Their skill

in narrating a story, in developing the events of a life, in tracing

the fortunes of a city or a state, as they were raised by a succession

of illustrious patriots, or sunk by a series of oppressive tyrants,

has never been approached in modern times. The histories of Xenophon

and Thucydides, of Livy and Sallust, of Caesar and Tacitus, are all

more or less formed on this model; and the more extended view of

history, as embracing an account of the countries the transactions of

which were narrated, originally formed, and to a great part executed,

by the father of history, Herodotus, appears to have been, in an

unaccountable manner, lost by his successors.

In these immortal works, however, human transactions are uniformly

regarded as they have been affected by, or called forth the agency of,

individual men. We are never presented with the view of society _in a

mass_; as influenced by a series of causes and effects independent of

the agency of individual man--or, to speak more correctly, in the

development of which the agency is an unconscious, and often almost a

passive, instrument. Constantly regarding history as an extensive

species of biography, they not only did not withdraw the eye to the

distance necessary to obtain such a general view of the progress of

things, but they did the reverse. Their great object was to bring the

eye so close as to see the whole virtues or vices of the principal

figures, which they exhibited on their moving panorama; and in so

doing they rendered it incapable of perceiving, at the same time, the

movement of the whole social body of which they formed a part. Even

Livy, in his pictured narrative of Roman victories, is essentially

biographical. His inimitable work owes its enduring celebrity to the

charming episodes of individuals, or graphic pictures of particular

events with which it abounds; scarce any general views on the progress

of society, or the causes to which its astonishing progress in the

Roman state was owing, are to be found. In the introduction to the

life of Catiline, Sallust has given, with unequalled power, a sketch

of the causes which corrupted the republic; and if his work had been

pursued in the same style, it would indeed have been a philosophical

history. But neither the Catiline nor the Jugurthine war are

histories; they are chapters of history, containing two interesting

biographies. Scattered through the writings of Tacitus, are to be

found numerous caustic and profound observations on human nature, and

the increasing vices and selfishness of a corrupted age: but, like the

maxims of Rochefoucault, it is to individual, not general, humanity

that they refer; and they strike us as so admirably just because they

do not describe general causes operating upon society as a body--which

often make little impression save on a few reflecting minds--but

strike direct to the human heart in a way which comes home to the

breast of every individual who reads them.

Never was a juster observation than that the human mind is never

quiescent; it may not give the external symptoms of action, but it

does not cease to have the internal action: it sleeps, but even then

it dreams. Writers innumerable have declaimed on the night of the

Middle Ages--on the deluge of barbarism which, under the Goths,

flooded the world--on the torpor of the human mind, under the combined

pressure of savage violence and priestly superstition; yet this was

precisely the period when the minds of men, deprived of external vent,

turned inwards on themselves; and that the learned and thoughtful,

shut out from any active part in society by the general prevalence of

military violence, sought, in the solitude of the cloister, employment

in reflecting on the mind itself, and the general causes which, under

its guidance, operated upon society. The influence of this great

change in the direction of thought at once appeared when knowledge,

liberated from the cloister and the university, again took its place

among the affairs of men. Machiavel in Italy, and Bacon in England,

for the first time in the annals of knowledge, reasoned upon human

affairs _as a science_. They spoke of the minds of men as permanently

governed by certain causes, and of known principles, always leading to

the same results; they treated of politics as a science in which

certain known laws existed, and could be discovered, as in mechanics

and hydraulics. This was a great step in advance, and demonstrated

that the superior age of the world, and the wide sphere to which

political observation had now been applied, had permitted the

accumulation of such an increased store of facts, as permitted

deductions, founded on experience, to be formed in regard to the

affairs of nations. Still more, it showed that the attention of

writers had been drawn to the general causes of human affairs; that

they reasoned on the actions of men as a subject of abstract thought;

regarded effects formerly produced as _likely to recur_ from a similar

combination of circumstances; and formed conclusions for the

regulation of future conduct, from the results of past experience.

This tendency is, in an especial manner, conspicuous in the _Discorsi_

of Machiavel, where certain general propositions are stated, deduced,

indeed, from the events of Roman story, but announced as lasting

truths, applicable to every future generation and circumstances of

men. In depth of view and justness of observation, these views of the

Florentine statesman never were surpassed. Bacon's essays relate, for

the most part, to subjects of morals, or domestic and private life;

but not unfrequently he touches on the general concerns of nations,

and with the same profound observation of the past, and philosophic

anticipation of the future.

Voltaire professed to elevate history in France from the _jejune_ and

trifling details of genealogy, courts, wars, and negotiations, in

which it had hitherto, in his country, been involved, to the more

general contemplation of arts and philosophy, and the progress of

human affairs; and, in some respects, he certainly effected a great

reformation on the ponderous annalists who had preceded him. But the

foundation of his history was still biography; he regarded human

events only as they were grouped round two or three great men, or as

they were influenced by the speculations of men of letters and

science. The history of France he stigmatized as savage and worthless

till the reign of Louis XIV.; the Russians he looked upon as bitter

barbarians till the time of Peter the Great. He thought the

philosophers alone all in all; till they arose, and a sovereign

appeared, who collected them round his throne, and shed on them the

rays of royal favour, human events were not worth narrating; they were

merely the contests of one set of savages plundering another.

Religion, in his eyes, was a mere priestly delusion to enslave and

benighten mankind; from its oppression the greatest miseries of modern

times had flowed; the first step in the emancipation of the human mind

was to chase for ever from the earth those sacerdotal tyrants. The

most free-thinking historian will now admit, that these views are

essentially erroneous; he will allow that, viewing Christianity merely

as a human institution, its effect in restraining the violence of

feudal anarchy was incalculable; long anterior to the date of the

philosophers, he will look for the broad foundation on which national

character and institutions, for good or for evil, have been formed.

Voltaire was of great service to history, by turning it from courts

and camps to the progress of literature, science, and the arts--to the

delineation of manners, and the preparation of anecdotes descriptive

of character; but, notwithstanding all his talent, he never got a

glimpse of the general causes which influence society. He gave us the

history of philosophy, but not the philosophy of history.

The ardent genius and pictorial eye of Gibbon rendered him an

incomparable delineator of events; and his powerful mind made him

seize the _general_ and characteristic features of society and

manners, as they appear in different parts of the world, as well as

the traits of individual greatness. His descriptions of the Roman

empire in the zenith of its power, as it existed in the time of

Augustus--of its decline and long-protracted old age, under

Constantine and his successors on the Byzantine throne--of the manners

of the pastoral nations, who, under different names, and for a

succession of ages, pressed upon and at last overturned the empire--of

the Saracens, who, issuing from the lands of Arabia, with the Koran in

one hand and the cimeter in the other, urged on their resistless

course, till they were arrested by the Atlantic on the one side, and

the Indian ocean on the other--of the stern crusaders, who, nursed

amid the cloistered shades and castellated realms of Europe, struggled

with that devastating horde "when 'twas strongest, and ruled it when

'twas wildest"--of the long agony, silent decay, and ultimate

resurrection of the Eternal City--are so many immortal pictures,

which, to the end of the world, will fascinate every ardent and

imaginative mind. But, not withstanding this incomparable talent for

general and characteristic description, he had not the mind necessary

for a philosophical analysis of the series of causes which influence

human events. He viewed religion with a jaundiced and prejudiced

eye--the fatal bequest of his age and French education, unworthy alike

of his native candour and inherent strength of understanding. He had

profound philosophic ideas, and occasionally let them out with

admirable effect; but the turn of his mind was essentially

descriptive, and his powers were such, in that brilliant department,

that they wiled him from the less inviting contemplation of general

causes. We turn over his fascinating pages without ever wearying; but

without ever discovering the general progress or apparent tendency of

human affairs. We look in vain for the profound reflections of

Machiavel on the permanent results of certain political combinations

or experiments. He has led us through a "mighty maze;" but he has made

no attempt to show it "not without a plan."

Hume is commonly called a philosophical historian, and so he is; but

he has even less than Gibbon the power of unfolding the general causes

which influence the progress of human events. He was not, properly

speaking, a philosophic historian, but a philosopher writing

history--and these are very different things. The practical statesman

will often make a better delineator of the progress of human affairs

than the philosophic recluse; for he is more practically acquainted

with their secret Springs: it was not in the schools, but the forum or

the palace, that Sallust, Tacitus, and Burke acquired their deep

insight into the human heart. Hume was gifted with admirable sagacity

in political economy; and it is the good sense and depth of his views

on that important subject, then for the first time brought to bear on

the annals of man, that has chiefly gained for him, and with justice,

the character of a philosophic historian. To this may be added the

admirable clearness and rhetorical powers with which he has stated the

principal arguments for and against the great changes in the English

institutions which it fell to his lot to recount--arguments far abler

than were either used by, or occurred to, the actors by whom they were

brought about; for it is seldom that a Hume is found in the councils

of men. With equal ability, too, he has given periodical sketches of

manners, customs, and habits, mingled with valuable details on

finance, commerce, and prices--all elements, and most important ones,

in the formation of philosophical history. We owe a deep debt of

gratitude to the man who has rescued these important facts from the

ponderous folios where they were slumbering in forgotten obscurity,

and brought them into the broad light of philosophic observation and

popular narrative. But, notwithstanding all this, Hume is far from

being gifted with the philosophy of history. He has collected or

prepared many of the facts necessary for the science, but he has made

little progress in it himself. He was essentially a sceptic. He aimed

rather at spreading doubts than shedding light. Like Voltaire and

Gibbon, he was scandalously prejudiced and unjust on the subject of

religion; and to write modern history without correct views on that

subject, is like playing Hamlet without the character of the Prince of

Denmark. He was too indolent to acquire the vast store of facts

indispensable for correct generalization on the varied theatre of

human affairs, and often drew hasty and incorrect conclusions from the

events which particularly came under his observation. Thus the

repeated indecisive battles between the fleets of Charles II. and the

Dutch, drew from him the observation, apparently justified by their

results, that sea-fights are seldom so important or decisive as those

at land. The fact is just the reverse. Witness the battle of Salamis,

which repelled from Europe the tide of Persian invasion; that of

Actium, which gave a master to the Roman world; that of Sluys, which

exposed France to the dreadful English invasions, begun under Edward

III.; that of Lepanto, which rolled back from Christendom the wave of

Mahometan conquest; the defeat of the Armada, which permanently

established the Reformation in Northern Europe; that of La Hogue,

which broke the maritime strength of Louis XIV.; that of Trafalgar,

which for ever took "ships, colonies, and commerce" from Napoleon, and

spread them with the British colonial empire over half the globe.

Montesquieu owes his colossal reputation chiefly to his _Esprit des

Loix_; but the _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_ is by much the

greater work. It has never attained nearly the reputation in this

country which it deserves, either in consequence of the English mind

being less partial than the French to the philosophy of human affairs,

or, as is more probable, from the system of education at our

universities being so exclusively devoted to the study of words, that

our scholars never arrive at the knowledge of things. It is impossible

to imagine a work in which the philosophy of history is more ably

condensed, or where there is exhibited, in a short space, a more

profound view of the general causes to which the long-continued

greatness and ultimate decline of that celebrated people were owing.

It is to be regretted only that he did not come to modern times and

other ages with the same masterly survey; the information collected in

the _Esprit des Loix_ would have furnished him with ample materials

for such a work. In that noble treatise, the same philosophic and

generalizing spirit is conspicuous; but there is too great a love of

system, an obvious partiality for fanciful analogies, and, not

unfrequently, conclusions hastily deduced from insufficient data.

These errors, the natural result of a philosophic and profound mind

wandering without a guide in the mighty maze of human transactions,

are entirely avoided in the _Grandeur et Decadence des Romains_, where

he was retained by authentic history to a known train of events, and

where his imaginative spirit and marked turn for generalization found

sufficient scope, and no more, to produce the most perfect commentary

on the annals of a single people of which the human mind can boast.

Bossuet, in his _Universal History_, aimed at a higher object; he

professed to give nothing less than a development of the plan of

Providence in the government of human affairs, during the whole of

antiquity, and down to the reign of Charlemagne. The idea was

magnificent, and the mental powers, as well as eloquence, of the

Bishop of Meaux promised the greatest results from such an

undertaking. But the execution has by no means corresponded to the

conception. Voltaire has said, that he professed to give a view of

universal history, and he has only given the history of the Jews; and

there is too much truth in the observation. He never got out of the

fetters of his ecclesiastical education; the Jews were the centre

round which he supposed all other nations revolved. His mind was

polemical, not philosophic; a great theologian, he was but an

indifferent historian. In one particular, indeed, his observations are

admirable, and, at times, in the highest degree impressive. He never

loses sight of the divine superintendence of human affairs; he sees in

all the revolutions of empires the progress of a mighty plan for the

ultimate redemption of mankind; and he traces the workings of this

superintending power in all the transactions of man. But it may be

doubted whether he took the correct view of this sublime but

mysterious subject. He supposes the divine agency to influence

_directly_ the affairs of men--not through the medium of general laws,

or the adaptation of our active propensities to the varying

circumstances of our condition. Hence his views strike at the freedom

of human actions; he makes men and nations little more than the

puppets by which the Deity works out the great drama of human affairs.

Without disputing the reality of such immediate agency in some

particular cases, it may safely be affirmed, that by far the greater

part of the affairs of men are left entirely to their own guidance,

and that their actions are overruled, not directed, by Almighty power

to work out the purposes of Divine beneficence.

That which Bossuet left undone, Robertson did. The first volume of his

Charles V. may justly be regarded as the greatest step which the human

mind had yet made in the philosophy of history. Extending his views

beyond the admirable survey which Montesquieu had given of the rise

and decline of the Roman empire, he aimed at giving a view of the

_progress of society_ in modern times. This matter, of the progress of

society, was a favourite subject at that period with political

philosophers; and by combining the speculations of these ingenious men

with the solid basis of facts which his erudition and industry had

worked out, Robertson succeeded in producing the most luminous, and at

the same time just, view of the progress of nations that had yet been

exhibited among mankind. The philosophy of history here appeared in

its full lustre. Men and nations were exhibited in their just

proportions. Society was viewed, not only in its details, but its

masses; the _general causes_ which influence its progress, running

into or mutually affecting each other, and yet all conspiring with

more or less efficacy to bring about a general result, were exhibited

in the most lucid and masterly manner. The great causes which have

contributed to form the elements of modern society--the decaying

civilization of Rome--the irruption of the northern nations--the

prostration and degradation of the conquered people--the revival of

the military spirit with the private wars of the nobles--the feudal

system and institution of chivalry--the crusades, and revival of

letters following the capture of Constantinople by the Turks--the

invention of printing, and consequent extension of knowledge to the

great body of the people--the discovery of the compass, and, with it,

of America, by Columbus, and doubling of the Cape of Good Hope by

Vasco de Gama--the discovery of gunpowder, and prodigious change

thereby effected in the implements of human destruction--are all there

treated in the most luminous manner, and, in general, with the justest

discrimination. The vast agency of general causes upon the progress of

mankind now became apparent: unseen powers, like the deities of Homer

in the war of Troy, were seen to mingle at every stop with the tide of

sublunary affairs; and so powerful and irresistible does their agency,

when once revealed, appear, that we are perhaps now likely to fall

into the opposite extreme, and to ascribe too little to individual

effort or character. Men and nations seem to be alike borne forward on

the surface of a mighty stream, which they are equally incapable of

arresting or directing; and, after surveying the vain and impotent

attempts of individuals to extricate themselves from the current, we

are apt to exclaim with the philosopher,[16] "He has dashed with his

oar to hasten the cataract; he has waved with his fan to give speed to

the winds."

A nearer examination, however, will convince every candid enquirer,

that individual character exercises, if not a paramount, yet a very

powerful influence on human affairs. Whoever investigates minutely any

period of history will find, on the one hand, that general causes

affecting the whole of society are in constant operation; and on the

other, that these general causes themselves are often set in motion,

or directed in their effects, by particular men. Thus, of what

efficacy were the constancy of Pitt, the foresight of Burke, the arm

of Nelson, the wisdom of Wellington, the genius of Wellesley, in

bringing to maturity the British empire, and spreading the Anglo-Saxon

race, in pursuance of its appointed mission, over half the globe! What

marvellous effect had the heroism and skill of Robert Bruce upon the

subsequent history of Scotland, and, through it, on the fortunes of

the British race! Thus biography, or the deeds or thoughts of

illustrious men, still forms a most important, and certainly the most

interesting, part even of general history; and the perfection of that

noble art consists, not in the exclusive delineation of individual

achievement, or the concentration of attention on general causes, but

in the union of the two in due proportions, as they really exist in

nature, and determine, by their combined operation, the direction of

human affairs. The talent now required in the historian partakes,

accordingly, of this two-fold character. He is expected to write

philosophy and biography: skill in drawing individual character, the

power of describing individual achievements, with a clear perception

of general causes, and the generalizing faculty of enlarged

philosophy. He must combine in his mind the powers of the microscope

and the telescope; be ready, like the steam-engine, at one time to

twist a fibre, at another to propel an hundred-gun ship. Hence the

rarity of eminence in this branch of knowledge; and if we could

conceive a writer who, to the ardent genius and descriptive powers of

Gibbon, should unite the lucid glance and just discrimination of

Robertson, and the calm sense and reasoning powers of Hume, he would

form a more perfect historian than ever has, or probably ever will

appear upon earth.

With all his generalizing powers, however, Robertson fell into one

defect--or rather, he was unable, in one respect, to extricate himself

from the prejudices of his age and profession. He was not a

freethinker--on the contrary, he was a sincere and pious divine; but

he lived in an age of freethinkers--they had the chief influence in

the formation of a writer's fame; and he was too desirous of literary

reputation to incur the hazard of ridicule or contempt, by assigning

too prominent a place to the obnoxious topic. Thence he has ascribed

far too little influence to Christianity, in restraining the ferocity

of savage manners, preserving alive the remains of ancient knowledge,

and laying in general freedom the broad and deep foundations of

European society. He has not overlooked these topics, but he has not

given them their due place, nor assigned them their proper weight. He

lived and died in comparative retirement; and he was never able to

shake himself free from the prejudices of his country and education,

on the subject of Romish religion. Not that he exaggerated the abuses

and enormities of the Roman Catholic superstition which brought about

the Reformation, nor the vast benefits which Luther conferred upon

mankind by bringing them to light; both were so great, that they

hardly admitted of exaggeration. His error--and, in the delineation of

the progress of society in modern Europe, it was a very great

one--consisted in overlooking the beneficial effect of that very

superstition, then so pernicious, in a _prior age of the world_, when

violence was universal, crime prevalent alike in high and low places,

and government impotent to check either the tyranny of the great or

the madness of the people. Then it was that superstition was the

greatest blessing which Providence, in mercy, could bestow on mankind;

for it effected what the wisdom of the learned or the efforts of the

active were alike unable to effect; it restrained the violence by

imaginary, which was inaccessible to the force of real, terrors; and

spread that protection under the shadow of the Cross, which could

never have been obtained by the power of the sword. Robertson was

wholly insensible to these early and inestimable blessings of the

Christian faith; he has admirably delineated the beneficial influence

of the Crusades upon subsequent society, but on this all-important

topic he is silent. Yet, whoever has studied the condition of

European society in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh centuries, as it

has since been developed in the admirable works of Sismondi, Thierry,

Michelet, and Guizot, must be aware that the services, not merely of

Christianity, but of the superstitions which had usurped its place,

were, during that long period, incalculable; and that, but for them,

European society would infallibly have sunk, as Asiatic in every age

has done, beneath the desolating sword of barbarian power.

Sismondi--if the magnitude, and in many respects the merit, of his

works be considered--must be regarded as one of the greatest

historians of modern times. His "History of the Italian Republics" in

sixteen, of the "Monarchy of France" in thirty volumes, attest the

variety and extent of his antiquarian researches, as well as the

indefatigable industry of his pen: his "Literature of the South of

Europe" in four, and "Miscellaneous Essays" in three volumes, show how

happily he has blended these weighty investigations with the lighter

topics of literature and poetry, and the political philosophy which,

in recent times, has come to occupy so large a place in the study of

all who have turned their mind to the progress of human affairs. Nor

is the least part of his merit to be found in the admirable skill with

which he has condensed, each in two volumes, his great histories, for

the benefit of that numerous class of readers who, unable or unwilling

to face the formidable undertaking of going through his great

histories, are desirous of obtaining such a brief summary of their

leading events as may suffice for persons of ordinary perseverance or

education. His mind was essentially philosophical; and it is the

philosophy of modern history, accordingly, which he has exerted

himself so strenuously to unfold. He views society at a distance, and

exhibits its great changes in their just proportions, and, in general,

with their true effects. His success in this arduous undertaking has

been great indeed. He has completed the picture of which Robertson had

only formed the sketch--and completed it with such a prodigious

collection of materials, and so lucid an arrangement of them in their

appropriate places, as to have left future ages little to do but draw

the just conclusions from the results of his labours.

With all these merits, and they are great, and with this rare

combination of antiquarian industry with philosophic generalization,

Sismondi is far from being a perfect historian. He did well to abridge

his great works; for he will find few readers who will have

perseverance enough to go through them. An abridgement was tried of

Gibbon; but it had little success, and has never since been attempted.

You might as well publish an abridgement of Waverley or Ivanhoe. Every

reader of the _Decline and Fall_ must feel that condensation is

impossible, without an omission of interest or a curtailment of

beauty. Sismondi, with all his admirable qualities as a general and

philosophic historian, wants the one thing needful in exciting

interest--descriptive and dramatic power. He was a man of great vigour

of thought and clearness of observation, but little genius--at least

of that kind of genius which is necessary to move the feelings or warm

the imagination. That was his principal defect; and it will prevent

his great works from ever commanding the attention of a numerous body

of general readers, however much they may be esteemed by the learned

and studious. Conscious of this deficiency, he makes scarce any

attempt to make his narrative interesting; but, reserving his whole

strength for general views on the progress of society, or philosophic

observations on its most important changes, he fills up the

intermediate space with long quotations from chronicles, memoirs, and

state papers--a sure way, if the selection is not made with great

judgment, of rendering the whole insupportably tedious. Every

narrative, to be interesting, should be given in the writer's _own

words_, unless on those occasions, by no means frequent, when some

striking or remarkable expressions of a speaker, or contemporary

writer, are to be preserved. Unity of style and expression is as

indispensable in a history which is to move the heart, or fascinate

the imagination, as in a tragedy, a painting, or an epic poem.

But, in addition to this, Sismondi's general views, though ordinarily

just, and always expressed with clearness and precision, are not

always to be taken without examination. Like Robertson, he was never

able to extricate himself entirely from the early prejudices of his

country and education; hardly any of the Geneva school of philosophers

have been able to do so. Brought up in that learned and able, but

narrow, and in some respects bigoted community, he was early engaged

in the vast undertaking of the History of the Italian Republics. Thus,

before he was well aware of it, and at a time of life, when the

opinions are flexible, and easily moulded by external impressions, he

became irrevocably enamoured of such little communities as he had

lived in, or was describing, and imbibed all the prejudices against

the Church of Rome, which have naturally, from close proximity, and

the endurance of unutterable evils at its hands, been ever prevalent

among the Calvinists of Geneva. These causes have tinged his otherwise

impartial views with two signal prejudices, which appear in all his

writings where these subjects are even remotely alluded to. His

partiality for municipal institutions, and the social system depending

on them, is as extravagant, as his aversion to the Church of Rome is

conspicuous and intemperate. His idea of a perfect society would be a

confederacy of little republics, governed by popularly elected

magistrates, holding the scarlet old lady of Rome in utter

abomination, and governed in matters of religion by the Presbyterian

forms, and the tenets of Calvin. It is not to be wondered at, that the

annalist of the countries of Tasso and Dante, of Titian and Machiavel,

of Petrarch and Leonardo da Vinci, of Galileo and Michael Angelo,

should conceive, that in no other state of society is such scope

afforded for mental cultivation and the development of the highest

efforts of genius. Still less is it surprising, that the historian of

the crusade against the Albigenses, of the unheard-of atrocities of

Simon de Montfort, of the wholesale massacres, burnings, and

torturings, which have brought such indelible disgrace on the Roman

priesthood, should feel deeply interested in a faith which has

extricated his own country from the abominable persecution. But still,

this indulgence of these natural, and in some respects praiseworthy,

feelings, has blinded Sismondi to the insurmountable evils of a

confederacy of small republics at this time, amidst surrounding,

powerful, and monarchical states; and to the inappreciable blessings

of the Christian faith, and even of the Romish superstition, before

the period when these infamous cruelties began, when their warfare was

only with the oppressor, their struggles with the destroyers of the

human race.

But truth is great, and will prevail. Those just views of modern

society, which neither the luminous eye of Robertson, nor the learned

research and philosophic mind of Sismondi could reach, have been

brought forward by a writer of surpassing ability, whose fame as an

historian and a philosopher is for the time overshadowed by the more

fleeting celebrity of the statesman and the politician. We will not

speak of M. GUIZOT in the latter character, much as we are tempted to

do so, by the high and honourable part which he has long borne in

European diplomacy, and the signal ability with which, in the midst of

a short-sighted and rebellious generation, clamouring, as the Romans

of old, for the _multis utile bellum_, he has sustained his

sovereign's wise and magnanimous resolution to maintain peace. We are

too near the time to appreciate the magnitude of these blessings; men

would not now believe through what a crisis the British empire,

unconscious of its danger, passed, when M. Thiers was dismissed, three

years and a half ago, by Louis Philippe, and M. Guizot called to the

helm. But when the time arrives, as arrive it will, that the

diplomatic secrets of that period are brought to light; when the

instructions of the revolutionary minister to the admiral of the

Toulon fleet are made known, and the marvellous chance which prevented

their being acted upon by him, has become matter of history; it will

be admitted, that the civilized world have good cause to thank M.

Guizot for saving it from a contest as vehement, as perilous, and

probably as disastrous to all concerned, as that which followed the

French Revolution.

Our present business is with M. Guizot as a historian and philosopher;

a character in which he will be remembered, long after his services to

humanity as a statesman and a minister have ceased to attract the

attention of men. In those respects, we place him in the very highest

rank among the writers of modern Europe. It must be understood,

however, in what his greatness consists, lest the readers, expecting

what they will not find, experience disappointment, when they begin

the study of his works. He is neither imaginative nor pictorial; he

seldom aims at the pathetic, and has little eloquence. He is not a

Livy nor a Gibbon. Nature has not given him either dramatic or

descriptive powers. He is a man of the highest genius; but it consists

not in narrating particular events, or describing individual

achievement. It is in the discovery of general causes; in tracing the

operation of changes in society, which escape ordinary observation: in

seeing whence man has come, and whether he is going, that his

greatness consists: and in that loftiest of the regions of history, he

is unrivaled. We know of no author who has traced the changes of

society, and the general causes which determine the fate of nations,

with such just views and so much sagacious discrimination. He is not

properly speaking, an historian; his vocation and object were

different. He is a great discourser on history. If ever the philosophy

of history was embodied in a human being, it is in M. Guizot.

The style of this great author is, in every respect, suited to his

subject. He does not aim at the highest flights of fancy; makes no

attempt to warm the soul or melt the feelings; is seldom imaginative,

and never descriptive. But he is uniformly lucid, sagacious, and

discriminating; deduces his conclusions with admirable clearness from

his premises, and occasionally warms from the innate grandeur of his

subject into a glow of fervent eloquence. He seems to treat of human

affairs, as if he viewed them from a loftier sphere than other men; as

if he were elevated above the usual struggles and contests of

humanity; and a superior power had withdrawn the veil which shrouds

their secret causes and course from the gaze of sublunary beings. He

cares not to dive into the secrets of cabinets; attaches little,

perhaps too little, importance to individual character; but fixes his

steady gaze on the great and lasting causes which, in a durable

manner, influence human affairs. He views them not from year to year

but from century to century; and, when considered in that view, it is

astonishing how much the importance of individual agency disappears.

Important in their generation--sometimes almost omnipotent for good or

for evil while they live--particular men, how great soever, rarely

leave any very important consequences behind them; or at least rarely

do what other men might not have done as effectually as them, and

which was not already determined by the tendency of the human mind,

and the tide, either of flow or ebb, by which human affairs were at

the time wafted to and fro. The desperate struggles of war or of

ambition in which they were engaged, and in which so much genius and

capacity were exerted, are swept over by the flood of time, and seldom

leave any lasting trace behind. It is the men who determine the

direction of this tide, who imprint their character on general

thought, who are the real directors of human affairs; it is the giants

of thought who, in the end, govern the world--kings and ministers,

princes and generals, warriors and legislators, are but the ministers

of their blessings or their curses to mankind. But their dominion

seldom begins till themselves are mouldering in their graves.

Guizot's largest work, in point of size, is his translation of

_Gibbon's Rome_; and the just and philosophic spirit in which he

viewed he course of human affairs, was admirably calculated to provide

an antidote to the sceptical sneers which, in a writer of such genius

and strength of understanding, are at once the marvel and the disgrace

of that immortal work. He has begun also a history of the English

Revolution, to which he was led by having been the editor of a

valuable collection of Memoirs relating to the great Rebellion,

translated into French, in twenty-five volumes. But this work only got

the length of two volumes, and came no further down than the death of

Charles I., an epoch no further on in the English than the execution

of Louis in the French revolution. This history is clear, lucid, and

valuable; but it is written with little eloquence, and has met with no

great success: the author's powers were not of the dramatic or

pictorial kind necessary to paint that dreadful story. These were

editorial or industrial labours unworthy of Guizot's mind; it was when

he delivered lectures from the chair of history in Paris, that his

genius shone forth in its proper sphere and its true lustre.

His _Civilisation en France_, in five volumes, _Civilisation

Europeenne_, and _Essais sur l'Histoire de France_, each in one

volume, are the fruits of these professional labours. The same

profound thought, sagacious discrimination, and lucid view, are

conspicuous in them all; but they possess different degrees of

interest to the English reader. The _Civilisation en France_ is the

groundwork of the whole, and it enters at large into the whole

details, historical, legal, and antiquarian, essential for its

illustration, and the proof of the various propositions which it

contains. In the _Civilisation Europeenne_, and _Essays on the History

of France_, however, the general results are given with equal

clearness and greater brevity. We do not hesitate to say, that they

appear to us to throw more light on the history of society in modern

Europe, and the general progress of mankind, from the exertions of its

inhabitants, than any other works in existence; and it is of them,

especially the first, that we propose to give our readers some

account.

The most important event which ever occurred in the history of

mankind, is the one concerning which contemporary writers have given

us the least satisfactory accounts. Beyond all doubt the overthrow of

Rome by the Goths was the most momentous catastrophe which has

occurred on the earth since the deluge; yet, if we examine either the

historians of antiquity or the earliest of modern times, we find it

wholly impossible to understand to what cause so great a catastrophe

had been owing. What gave, in the third and fourth centuries, so

prodigious an impulse to the northern nations, and enabled them, after

being so long repelled by the arms of Rome, finally to prevail over

it? What, still more, so completely paralysed the strength of the

empire during that period, and produced that astonishing weakness in

the ancient conquerors of the world, which rendered them the easy prey

of those whom they had so often subdued? The ancient writers content

themselves with saying, that the people became corrupted; that they

lost their military courage; that the recruiting of the legions, in

the free inhabitants of the empire, became impossible; and that the

semi-barbarous tribes on the frontier could not be relied on to uphold

its fortunes. But a very little reflection must be sufficient to show

that there must have been much more in it than this, before a race of

conquerors was converted into one of slaves; before the legions fled

before the barbarians, and the strength of the civilized was

overthrown by the energy of the savage world. For what prevented a

revenue from being raised in the third or fourth, as well as the first

or second centuries? Corruption in its worst form had doubtless

pervaded the higher ranks in Rome from the Emperor downward; but these

vices are the faults of the exalted and the affluent only; they never

have, and never will, extend generally to the great body of the

community; for this plain reason, that they are not rich enough to

purchase them. But the remarkable thing is, that in the decline of the

empire, it was in the lower ranks that the greatest and most fatal

weakness first appeared. Long before the race of the Patricians had

become extinct, the free cultivators had disappeared from the fields.

Leaders and generals of the most consummate abilities, of the greatest

daring, frequently arose; but their efforts proved in the end

ineffectual, from the impossibility of finding a sturdy race of

followers to fill their ranks. The legionary Italian soldier was

awanting--his place was imperfectly supplied by the rude Dacian, the

hardy German, the faithless Goth. So completely were the inhabitants

of the provinces within the Rhine and the Danube paralysed, that they

ceased to make any resistance to the hordes of invaders; and the

fortunes of the empire were, for several generations, sustained solely

by the heroic efforts of individual leaders--Belisarius, Narces,

Julian, Aurelian, Constantine, and many others--whose renown, though

it could not rouse the pacific inhabitants to warlike efforts, yet

attracted military adventurers from all parts of the world to their

standard. Now, what weakened and destroyed the rural population? It

could not be luxury; on the contrary, they were suffering under excess

of poverty, and bent down beneath a load of taxes, which in Gaul, in

the time of Constantine, amounted, as Gibbon tells us, to nine pounds

sterling on every freeman? What was it, then, which occasioned the

depopulation and weakness? This is what it behoves us to know--this it

is which ancient history has left unknown.

It is here that the vast step in the philosophy of history made from

ancient to modern times is apparent. From a few detached hints and

insulated facts, left by the ancient annalists, apparently ignorant of

their value, and careless of their preservation, modern industry,

guided by the light of philosophy, has reared up the true solution of

the difficulty, and revealed the real causes, hidden from the ordinary

gaze, which, even in the midst of its greatest prosperity, gradually,

but certainly, undermined the strength of the empire. Michelet, in his

_Gaule sous les Romains_, a most able and interesting work--Thierry,

in his _Domination Romaine en Gaule_, and his _Histoire des Rois

Merovingians_--Sismondi, in the three first volumes of his _Histoire

des Francais_--and Guizot, in his _Civilisation Europeenne_, and the

first volumes of his _Essais sur l'Histoire de France_--have applied

their great powers to this most interesting subject. It may safely be

affirmed, that they have got to the bottom of the subject, and lifted

up the veil from one of the darkest, and yet most momentous, changes

in the history of mankind. Guizot gives the following account of the

principal causes which silently undermined the strength of the empire,

flowing from the peculiar organization of ancient society:--

"When Rome extended, what did it do? Follow its history, and you

will find that it was everlastingly engaged in conquering or

founding cities. It was with cities that it fought--with cities

that it contracted--into cities that it sent colonies. The

history of the conquest of the world by Rome, is nothing but the

history of the conquest and foundation of a great number of

cities. In the East, the expansion of the Roman power assumed,

from the very outset, a somewhat dissimilar character; the

population was differently distributed from the West, and much

less concentrated in cities; but in the European world, the

foundation or conquest of towns was the uniform result of Roman

conquest. In Gaul and Spain, in Italy, it was constantly towns

which opposed the barrier to Roman domination, and towns which

were founded or garrisoned by the legions, or strengthened by

colonies, to retain them when vanquished in a state of

subjection. Great roads stretched from one town to another; the

multitude of cross roads which now intersect each other in every

direction, was unknown. They had nothing in common with that

multitude of little monuments, villages, churches, castles,

villas, and cottages, which now cover our provinces. Rome has

bequeathed to us nothing, either in its capital or its provinces,

but the _municipal character_, which produced immense monuments

on certain points, destined for the use of the vast population

which was there assembled together.

"From this peculiar conformation of society in Europe, under the

Roman dominion, consisting of a vast conglomeration of cities,

with each a dependent territory, all independent of each other,

arose the absolute necessity for a central and absolute

government. One municipality in Rome might conquer the world: but

to retain it in subjection, and provide for the government of all

its multifarious parts, was a very different matter. This was one

of the chief causes of the general adoption of a strong

concentrated government under the empire. Such centralized

despotism not only succeeded in restraining and regulating all

the incoherent members of the vast dominion, but the idea of a

central irresistible authority insinuated itself into men's minds

every where, at the same time, with wonderful facility. At first

sight, one is astonished to see, in that prodigious and

ill-united aggregate of little republics, in that accumulation of

separate municipalities, spring up so suddenly an unbounded

respect for the sacred authority of the empire. But the truth is,

it had become a matter of absolute necessity, that the bond which

held together the different parts of this heterogeneous dominion

should be very powerful; and this it was which gave it so ready a

reception in the minds of men.

"But when the vigour of the central power declined during a

course of ages, from the pressure of external warfare, and the

weakness of internal corruption, this necessity was no longer

felt. The capital ceased to be able to provide for the provinces,

it rather sought protection from them. During four centuries, the

central power of the emperors incessantly struggled against this

increasing debility; but the moment at length arrived, when all

the practised skill of despotism, over the long _insouciance_ of

servitude, could no longer keep together the huge and unwieldy

body. In the fourth century, we see it at once break up and

disunite; the barbarians entered on all sides from without, the

provinces ceased to oppose any resistance from within; the cities

to evince any regard for the general welfare; and, as in the

disaster of a shipwreck, every one looked out for his individual

safety. Thus, on the dissolution of the empire, the same general

state of society presented itself as in its cradle. The imperial

authority sunk into the dust, and municipal institutions alone

survived the disaster. This, then, was the chief legacy which the

ancient bequeathed to the modern world--for it alone survived the

storm by which the former had been destroyed--cities and a

municipal organization every where established. But it was not

the only legacy. Beside it, there was the recollection at least

of the awful majesty of the emperor--of a distant, unseen, but

sacred and irresistible power. These are the two ideas which

antiquity bequeathed to modern times. On the one hand, the

municipal _regime_, its rules, customs, and principles of

liberty: on the other a common, general, civil legislation; and

the idea of absolute power, of a sacred majesty, the principle of

order and servitude."--(_Civilization Europeenne_, 20, 23.)

The causes which produced the extraordinary, and at first sight

unaccountable, depopulation of the country districts, not only in

Italy, but in Gaul, Spain, and all the European provinces of the Roman

empire, are explained by Guizot in his _Essays on the History of

France_, and have been fully demonstrated by Sismondi, Thierry, and

Michelet. They were a natural consequence of the municipal system,

then universally established as the very basis of civilization in the

whole Roman empire, and may be seen urging, from a similar cause, the

Turkish empire to dissolution at this day. This was the imposition of

a certain fixed duty, as a burden on each municipality, to be raised,

indeed, by its own members, but admitting of no diminution, save under

the most special circumstances, and on an express exemption by the

emperor. Had the great bulk of the people been free, and the empire

prosperous, this fixity of impost would have been the greatest of all

blessings. It is the precise boon so frequently and earnestly implored

by our ryots in India, and indeed by the cultivators all over the

East. But when the empire was beset on all sides with enemies--only

the more rapacious and pressing, that the might of the legions had so

long confined them within the comparatively narrow limits of their own

sterile territories--and disasters, frequent and serious, were laying

waste the frontier provinces, it became the most dreadful of all

scourges; because, as the assessment on each district was fixed, and

scarcely ever suffered any abatement, every disaster experienced

increased the burden on the survivors who had escaped it; until they

became bent down under such a weight of taxation, as, coupled with the

small number of freemen on whom it exclusively fell, crushed every

attempt at productive industry. It was the same thing as if all the

farmers on each estate were to be bound to make up, annually, the same

amount of rent to their landlord, no matter how many of them had

become insolvent. We know how long the agriculture of Britain, in a

period of declining prices and frequent disaster, would exist under

such a system.

Add to this the necessary effect which the free circulation of grain

throughout the whole Roman world had in depressing the agriculture of

Italy, Gaul, and Greece. They were unable to withstand the competition

of Egypt, Lybia, and Sicily--the storehouses of the world; where the

benignity of the climate, and the riches of the soil, rewarded seventy

or an hundred fold the labours of the husbandman. Gaul, where the

increase was only seven-fold--Italy, where it seldom exceeded

twelve--Spain, where it was never so high, were crushed in the

struggle. The mistress of the world, as Tacitus bewails, had come to

depend for her subsistence on the floods of the Nile. Unable to

compete with the cheap grain raised in the more favoured regions of

the south, the cultivators of Italy and Gaul gradually retired from

the contest. They devoted their extensive estates to pasturage,

because live cattle or dairy produce could not bear the expense of

being shipped from Africa; and the race of agriculturists, the

strength of the legions, disappeared in the fields, and was lost in

the needy and indolent crowd of urban citizens, in part maintained by

tributes in corn brought from Egypt and Lybia. This augmented the

burdens upon those who remained in the rural districts; for, as the

taxes of each municipality remained the same, every one that withdrew

into the towns left an additional burden on the shoulders of his

brethren who remained behind. So powerful was the operation of these

two causes--the fixity in the state burdens payable by each

municipality, and the constantly declining prices, owing to the vast

import from agricultural regions more favoured by nature--that it

fully equaled the effect of the ravages of the barbarians in the

frontier provinces exposed to their incursions; and the depopulation

of the rural districts was as complete in Italy and Gaul, before a

barbarian had passed the Alps or set his foot across the Rhine, as in

the plains between the Alps or the Adriatic and the Danube, which had

for long been ravaged by their arms.

Domestic slavery conspired with these evils to prevent the healing

power of nature from closing these yawning wounds. Gibbon estimates

the number of slaves throughout the empire, in its latter days, at a

number equal to that of the freemen; in other words, one half of the

whole inhabitants were in a state of servitude;[17] and as there were

120,000,000 souls under the Roman sway, sixty millions were in that

degraded condition. There is reason to believe that the number of the

slaves was still greater than this estimate, and at least double that

of the freemen; for it is known by an authentic enumeration, that, in

the time of the Emperor Claudius, the number of citizens in the empire

was only 6,945,000 men, who, with their families, might amount to

twenty millions of souls; and the total number of freemen was about

double that of the citizens.[18] In one family alone, in the time of

Pliny, there were 4116 slaves.[19] But take the number of slaves,

according to Gibbon's computation, at only half the entire population,

what a prodigious abstraction must this multitude of slaves have made

from the physical and moral strength of the empire! Half the people

requiring food, needing restraint, incapable of trust, and yet adding

nothing to the muster-roll of the legions, or the persons by whom the

fixed and immovable annual taxes were to be made good! In what state

would the British empire now be, if we were subjected to the action of

similar causes of ruin? A vast and unwieldy dominion, exposed on every

side to the incursions of barbarous and hostile nations, daily

increasing in numbers, and augmenting in military skill; a fixed

taxation, for which the whole free inhabitants of every municipality

were jointly and severally responsible, to meet the increasing

military establishment required by these perils; a declining, and at

length extinct, agriculture in the central provinces of the empire,

owing to the deluge of cheap grain from its fertile extremities,

wafted over the waters of the Mediterranean; multitudes of turbulent

freemen in cities, kept quiet by daily distribution of provisions at

the public expense, from the imperial granaries; and a half, or

two-thirds, of the whole population in a state of slavery--neither

bearing any share of the public burdens, nor adding to the strength of

the military array of the empire. Such are the discoveries of modern

philosophy, as to the causes of the decline and ultimate fall of the

Roman empire, gleaned from a few facts, accidentally preserved by the

ancient writers, apparently unconscious of their value! It is a noble

science which, in so short a time, has presented such a gift to

mankind.

Guizot has announced, and ably illustrated, a great truth, which, when

traced to its legitimate consequences, will be found to go far towards

dispelling many of the pernicious innovating dogmas which have so long

been afloat in the world. It is this, that whenever an institution,

though apparently pernicious in our eyes, has long existed, and under

a great variety of circumstances, we may rest assured that it in

reality has been attended with some advantages which counterbalance

its evils, and that upon the whole it is beneficial in its tendency.

This important principle is thus stated:--

"Independent of the efforts of man, there is established by a law

of providence, which it is impossible to mistake, and which is

analagous to what we witness in the natural world, a certain

measure of order, reason, and justice, without which society

cannot exist. From the single fact of its endurance we may

conclude, with certainty, that a society is not completely

absurd, insensate, or iniquitous; that it is not destitute of the

elements of reason, truth, and justice--which alone can give life

to society. If the more that society developes itself, the

stronger does this principle become--if it is daily accepted by a

greater number of men, it is a certain proof that in the lapse of

time there has been progressively introduced into it more reason,

more justice, more right. It is thus that the idea of political

legitimacy has arisen.

"This principle has for its foundation, in the first instance, at

least in a certain degree, the great principles of moral

legitimacy--justice, reason, truth. Then came the sanction of

time, which always begets the presumption of reason having

directed arrangements which have long endured. In the early

periods of society, we too often find force and falsehood ruling

the cradles of royalty, aristocracy, democracy, and even the

church; but every where you will see this force and falsehood

yielding to the reforming hand of time, and right and truth

taking their place in the rulers of civilization. It is this

progressive infusion of right and truth which has by degrees

developed the idea of political legitimacy; it is thus that it

has become established in modern civilization. At different

times, indeed, attempts have been made to substitute for this

idea the banner of despotic power; but, in doing so, they have

turned it aside from its true origin. It is so little the banner

of despotic power, that it is in the name of right and justice

that it has overspread the world. As little is it exclusive: it

belongs neither to persons, classes, nor sects; it arises

wherever the idea of right has developed itself. We shall meet

with this principle in systems the most opposite: in the feudal

system, in the municipalities of Flanders and Germany, in the

republics of Italy, as well as in simple monarchies. It is a

character diffused through the various elements of modern

civilization, and the perception of which is indispensable to the

right understanding of its history."--(_Lecture_ iii. 9, 11;

_Civilization Europeenne_.)

No principle ever was announced of more practical importance in

legislating for mankind, than is contained in this passage. The

doctrine is somewhat obscurely stated, and not with the precision

which in general distinguishes the French writers; but the import of

it seems to be this--That no system of government can long exist among

men, unless it is substantially, and in the majority of cases, founded

in reason and justice, and sanctioned by experienced utility for the

people among whom it exists; and therefore, that we may predicate with

perfect certainty of any institution which has been generally

extended and long established, that it has been upon the whole

beneficial, and should be modified or altered with a very cautious

hand. That this proposition is true, will probably be disputed by none

who have thought much and dispassionately on human affairs; for all

human institutions are formed and supported by men, and unless men had

some reason for supporting them, they would speedily sink to the

ground. It is in vain to say a privileged class have got possession of

the power, and they make use of it to perpetuate these abuses.

Doubtless, they are always sufficiently inclined to do so; but a

privileged class, or a despot, is always a mere handful against the

great body of the people; and unless their power is supported by the

force of general opinion, founded on experienced utility upon the

whole, it could not maintain its ground a single week. And this

explains a fact observed by an able and ingenious writer of the

present day,[20] that if almost all the great convulsions recorded in

history are attentively considered, it will be found, that after a

brief period of strenuous, and often almost superhuman effort, on the

part of the people, they have terminated in the establishment of a

government and institutions differing scarcely, except in name, from

that which had preceded the struggle. It is hardly necessary to remark

how striking a confirmation the English revolution of 1688, and the

French of 1830, afford of this truth.

And this explains what is the true meaning of, and solid foundation

for, that reverence for antiquity which is so strongly implanted in

human nature, and is never forgotten for any considerable time without

inducing the most dreadful disasters upon society. It means that those

institutions which have descended to us in actual practice from our

ancestors, come sanctioned by the _experience_ of ages; and that they

could not have stood so long a test unless they had been recommended,

in some degree at least, by their utility. It is not that our

ancestors were wiser than we are; they were certainly less informed,

and probably were, on that account, in the general case, less

judicious. But time has swept away their follies, which were doubtless

great enough, as it has done the worthless ephemeral literature with

which they, as we, were overwhelmed; and nothing has stood the test of

ages, and come down to us through a series of generations, of their

ideas or institutions, but what had some utility in human feelings and

necessities, and was on the whole expedient at the time when it arose.

Its utility may have ceased by the change of manners or of the

circumstances of society--that may be a good reason for cautiously

modifying or altering it--but rely upon it, it was once useful, if it

has existed long; and the presumption of present and continuing

utility requires to be strongly outweighed by forcible considerations

before it is abandoned. Lord Bacon has told us, in words which can

never become trite, so profound is their wisdom, that our changes, to

be beneficial, should resemble those of time, which, though the

greatest of all innovators, works out its alterations so gradually

that they are never perceived. Guizot makes, in the same spirit, the

following fine observation on the slow march of Supreme wisdom in the

government of the world:--

"If we turn our eyes to history, we shall find that all the great

developments of the human mind have turned to the advantage of

society--all the great struggles of humanity to the good of

mankind. It is not, indeed, immediately that these efforts take

place; ages often elapse, a thousand obstacles intervene, before

they are fully developed; but when we survey a long course of

ages, we see that all has been accomplished. The march of

Providence is not subjected to narrow limits; it cares not to

develope to-day the consequences of a principle which it has

established yesterday; it will bring them forth in ages, when the

appointed hour has arrived; and its course is not the less sure

that it is slow. The throne of the Almighty rests on time--it

marches through its boundless expanse as the gods of Homer

through space--it makes a step, and ages have passed away. How

many ages elapsed, how many changes ensued, before the

regeneration of the inner man, by means of Christianity,

exercised on the social state its great and salutary influence!

Nevertheless, it has at length succeeded. No one can mistake its

effects at this time."--(_Lecture_ i. 24.)

In surveying the progress of civilization in modern, as compared with

ancient times, two features stand prominent as distinguishing the one

from the other. These are the _church_ and the _feudal system_. They

were precisely the circumstances which gave the most umbrage to the

philosophers of the eighteenth century, and which awakened the

greatest transports of indignation among the ardent multitudes who, at

its close, brought about the French Revolution. Very different is the

light in which the eye of true philosophy, enlightened by the

experience of their abolition, views these great distinctive features

of modern society.

"Immense," says Guizot, "was the influence which the Christian

church exercised over the civilization of modern Europe. In the

outset, it was an incalculable advantage to have a moral power, a

power destitute of physical force, which reposed only on mental

convictions and moral feelings, established amidst that deluge of

physical force and selfish violence which overwhelmed society at

that period. Had the Christian church not existed, the world

would have been delivered over to the influence of physical

strength, in its coarsest and most revolting form. It alone

exercised a moral power. It did more; it spread abroad the idea

of a rule of obedience, a heavenly power, to which all human

beings, how great soever, were subjected, and which was above all

human laws. That of itself was a safeguard against the greatest

evils of society; for it affected the minds of those by whom they

were brought about; it professed that belief--the foundation of

the salvation of humanity--that there is above all existing

institutions, superior to all human laws, a permanent and divine

law, sometimes called Reason, sometimes Divine Command, but

which, under whatever name it goes, is for ever the same.

"Then the church commenced a great work--the separation of the

spiritual and temporal power. That separation is the origin of

liberty of conscience; it rests on no other principle than that

which lies at the bottom of the widest and most extended

toleration. The separation of the spiritual and temporal power

rests on the principle, that physical force is neither entitled

to act, nor can ever have any lasting influence, on thoughts,

conviction, truth; it flows from the eternal distinction between

the world of thought and the world of action, the world of

interior conviction and that of external facts. In truth, that

principle of the liberty of conscience, for which Europe has

combated and suffered so much, which has so slowly triumphed, and

often against the utmost efforts of the clergy themselves, was

first founded by the doctrine of the separation of the temporal

and spiritual power, in the cradle of European civilization. It

is the Christian church which, by the necessities of its

situation to defend itself against the assaults of barbarism,

introduced and maintained it. The presence of a moral influence,

the maintenance of a Divine law, the separation of the temporal

and spiritual power, are the three great blessings which the

Christian church has diffused in the dark ages over European

society.

"The influence of the Christian church was great and beneficent

for another reason. The bishop and clergy erelong became the

principal municipal magistrates: they were the chancellors and

ministers of kings--the rulers, except in the camp and the field,

of mankind. When the Roman empire crumbled into dust, when the

central power of the emperors and the legions disappeared, there

remained, we have seen, no other authority in the state but the

municipal functionaries. But they themselves had fallen into a

state of apathy and despair; the heavy burdens of despotism, the

oppressive taxes of the municipalities, the incursions of the

fierce barbarians, had reduced them to despair. No protection to

society, no revival of industry, no shielding of innocence, could

be expected from their exertions. The clergy, again, formed a

society within itself; fresh, young, vigorous, sheltered by the

prevailing faith, which speedily drew to itself all the learning

and intellectual strength that remained in the state. The bishops

and priests, full of life and of zeal, naturally were recurred to

in order to fill all civil situations requiring thought or

information. It is wrong to reproach their exercise of these

powers as an usurpation; they alone were capable of exercising

them. Thus has the natural course of things prescribed for all

ages and countries. The clergy alone were mentally strong and

morally zealous: they became all-powerful. It is the law of the

universe."--(_Lecture_ iii. 27, 31; _Civilization Europeenne._)

Nothing can be more just or important than these observations; and

they throw a new and consoling light on the progress and ultimate

destiny of European society. They are as original as they are

momentous. Robertson, with his honest horror of the innumerable

corruptions which, in the time of Leo X. and Luther, brought about the

Reformation--Sismondi, with his natural detestation of a faith which

had urged on the dreadful cruelties of the crusade of the Albigenses,

and which produced the revocation of the edict of Nantes--have alike

overlooked these important truths, so essential to a right

understanding of the history of modern society. They saw that the

arrogance and cruelty of the Roman clergy had produced innumerable

evils in later times; that their venality in regard to indulgences and

abuse of absolution had brought religion itself into discredit; that

the absurd and incredible tenets which they still attempted to force

on mankind, had gone far to alienate the intellectual strength of

modern Europe, during the last century, from their support. Seeing

this, they condemned it absolutely, for all times and in all places.

They fell into the usual error of men in reasoning on former from

their own times. They could not make "the past and the future

predominate over the present." They felt the absurdity of many of the

legends which the devout Catholics received as undoubted truths, and

they saw no use in perpetuating the belief in them; and thence they

conceived that they must always have been equally unserviceable,

forgetting that the eighteenth was not the eighth century; and that,

during the dark ages, violence would have rioted without control, if,

when reason was in abeyance, knowledge scanty, and military strength

alone in estimation, superstition had not thrown its unseen fetters

over the barbarian's arms. They saw that the Romish clergy, during

five centuries, had laboured strenuously, and often with the most

frightful cruelty, to crush independence of thought in matters of

faith, and chain the human mind to the tenets, often absurd and

erroneous, of her Papal creed; and they forgot that, during five

preceding centuries, the Christian church had laboured as assiduously

to establish the independence of thought from physical coercion, and

had alone kept alive, during the interregnum of reason, the sparks of

knowledge and the principles of freedom.

In the same liberal and enlightened spirit Guizot views the feudal

system, the next grand characteristic of modern times.

"A decisive proof that, in the tenth century, the feudal system

had become necessary, and was, in truth, the only social state

possible, is to be found in the universality of its adoption.

Universally, upon the cessation of barbarism, the feudal forms

were adopted. At the first moment of barbarian conquest, men saw

only the triumph of chaos. All unity, all general civilization

disappeared, on all sides was seen society falling into

dissolution; and, in its stead, arising a multitude of little,

obscure, isolated communities. This appeared to all the

contemporaries nothing short of universal anarchy. The poets, the

chroniclers of the time, viewed it as the approach of the end of

the world. It was, in truth, the end of the ancient world; but

the commencement of a new one, placed on a broad basis, and with

large means of social improvement and individual happiness.

"Then it was that the feudal system became necessary, inevitable.

It was the only possible means of emerging from the general

chaos. The whole of Europe, accordingly, at the same time adopted

it. Even those portions of society which were most strangers,

apparently, to that system, entered warmly into its spirit, and

were fain to share in its protection. The crown, the church, the

communities, were constrained to accommodate themselves to it.

The churches became suzerain or vassal; the burghs had their

lords and their feuars; the monasteries and abbeys had their

feudal retainers, as well as the temporal barons. Royalty itself

was disguised under the name of a feudal superior. Every thing

was given in fief; not only lands, but certain rights flowing

from them, as that of cutting wood, fisheries, or the like. The

church made subinfeudations of their casual revenues, as the dues

on marriages, funerals, and baptisms."

The establishment of the feudal system thus universally in Europe,

produced one effect, the importance of which can hardly be

exaggerated. Hitherto the mass of mankind had been collected under the

municipal institutions which had been universal in antiquity, in

cities, or wandered in vagabond hordes through the country. Under the

feudal system these men lived isolated, each in his own habitation, at

a great distance from each other. A glance will show that this single

circumstance must have exercised on the character of society, and the

course of civilization, the social preponderance; the government of

society passed at once from the towns to the country--private took the

lead of public property--private prevailed over public life. Such was

the first effect, and it was an effect purely material, of the

establishment of the feudal system. But other effects, still more

material, followed, of a moral kind, which have exercised the most

important effects on the European manners and mind.

"The feudal proprietor established himself in an isolated place,

which, for his own protection, he rendered secure. He lived

there, with his wife, his children, and a few faithful friends,

who shared his hospitality, and contributed to his defence.

Around the castle, in its vicinity, were established the farmers

and serfs who cultivated his domain. In the midst of that

inferior, but yet allied and protected population, religion

planted a church, and introduced a priest. He was usually the

chaplain of the castle, and at the same time the curate of the

village; in subsequent ages these two characters were separated;

the village pastor resided beside his church. This was the

primitive feudal society--the cradle, as it were, of the European

and Christian world.

"From this state of things necessarily arose a prodigious

superiority on the part of the possessor of the fief, alike in

his own eyes, and in the eyes of those who surrounded him. The

feeling of individual importance, of personal freedom, was the

ruling principle of savage life; but here a new feeling was

introduced--the importance of a proprietor, of the chief of a

family, of a master, predominated over that of an individual.

From this situation arose an immense feeling of superiority--a

superiority peculiar to the feudal ages, and entirely different

from any thing which had yet been experienced in the world. Like

the feudal lord, the Roman patrician was the head of a family, a

master, a landlord. He was, moreover, a religious magistrate, a

pontiff in the interior of his family. He was, moreover, a member

of the municipality in which his property was situated, and

perhaps one of the august senate, which, in name at least, still

ruled the empire. But all this importance and dignity was derived

from without--the patrician shared it with the other members of

his municipality--with the corporation of which he formed a part.

The importance of the feudal lord, again, was purely

individual--he owed nothing to another; all the power he enjoyed

emanated from himself alone. What a feeling of individual

consequence must such a situation have inspired--what pride, what

insolence, must it have engendered in his mind! Above him was no

superior, of whose orders he was to be the mere interpreter or

organ--around him were no equals. No all-powerful municipality

made his wishes bend to its own--no superior authority exercised

a control over his wishes, he knew no bridle on his inclinations,

but the limits of his power, or the presence of danger.

"Another consequence, hitherto not sufficiently attended to, but

of vast importance, flowed from this society.

"The patriarchal society, of which the Bible and the Oriental

monuments offer the model, was the first combination of men. The

chief of a tribe lived with his children, his relations, the

different generations who have assembled around him. This was the

situation of Abraham--of the patriarchs: it is still that of the

Arab tribes which perpetuate their manners. The _clan_, of which

remains still exist in the mountains of Scotland, and the _sept_

of Ireland, is a modification of the patriarchal society: it is

the family of the chief, expanded during a succession of

generations, and forming a little aggregation of dependents,

still influenced by the same attachments, and subjected to the

same authority. But the feudal community was very different.

Allied at first to the clan, it was yet in many essential

particulars dissimilar. There did not exist between its members

the bond of relationship; they were not of the same blood; they

often did not speak the same language. The feudal lord belonged

to a foreign and conquering, his serfs to a domestic and

vanquished race. Their employments were as various as their

feelings and their traditions. The lord lived in his castle, with

his wife, his children, and relations: the serfs on the estate,

of a different race, of different names, toiled in the cottages

around. This difference was prodigious--it exercised a most

powerful effect on the domestic habits of modern Europe. It

engendered the attachments of home: it brought women into their

proper sphere in domestic life. The little society of freemen,

who lived in the midst of an alien race in the castle, were all

in all to each other. No forum or theatres were at hand, with

their cares or their pleasures; no city enjoyments were a

counterpoise to the pleasures of country life. War and the chase

broke in, it is true, grievously at times, upon this scene of

domestic peace. But war and the chase could not last for ever;

and, in the long intervals of undisturbed repose, family

attachments formed the chief solace of life. Thus it was that

WOMEN acquired their paramount influence--thence the manners of

chivalry, and the gallantry of modern times; they were but an

extension of the courtesy and habits of the castle. The word

_courtesy_ shows it--it was in the _court_ of the castle that the

habits it denotes were learned."--(_Lecture_ iv. 13, 17;

_Civilization Europeenne._)

We have exhausted, perhaps exceeded, our limits; and we have only

extracted a few of the most striking ideas from the first hundred

pages of one of Guizot's works--_ex uno disce omnes_. The translation

of them has been an agreeable occupation for a few evenings; but they

awake one mournful impression--the voice which uttered so many noble

and enlightened sentiments is now silent; the genius which once cast

abroad light on the history of man, is lost in the vortex of present

politics. The philosopher, the historian, are merged in the

statesman--the instructor of all in the governor of one generation.

Great as have been his services, brilliant his course in the new

career into which he has been launched, it is as nothing compared to

that which he has left; for the one confers present distinction, the

other immortal fame.

Footnotes:

[1] Little girl--or girl, merely.

[2] Mr O'Connell stated in his speech, after "the liberation," that

that most unexpected and miraculous event had been publicly prayed for

in all the churches of Belgium.

[3] Taken from Lewis's Statistics of the Four Reformed Parliaments.

[4] The following account of the number of freeholders on the

register, in 1837, when the number was largest, and in 1841, taken

from Lewis's tables, will show an immense decrease in those counties

completely under the control of the priests and agitators, and where

their power is unassailable.

1837. 1841.

Clare, 3170 1785

Cork, 4180 3706

Galway county, 3074 1990

Galway town, 2084 1600

King's county, 1520 1078

Limerick city, 2813 1670

Limerick county, 2850 1893

Mayo, 1569 1064

Meath, 1850 1236

Roscommon, 2077 1059

Tipperary, 3460 2464

Waterford, 1494 802

Wexford, 3031 1739

All those counties and cities are, and always have been, represented

by Radicals and Repealers; so that it appears the Repeal party are

invariably best off where there are least freeholders, notwithstanding

their constant complaints of what they suffer by the domination of the

constituencies.

[5] Qualifying under the "solvent tenant test," (which was generally

adopted by the Conservative barristers,) the claimant was obliged to

swear and to prove that "he could obtain from a good and solvent

tenant a clear yearly rent of ten pounds over and above what he paid

himself," while the freeholder, qualifying under "the beneficial

interest test," (which was acted on by the Whig and Radical

barristers,) had only to prove that the crops and produce raised on

his land by his own labour, yielded him a surplus of ten pounds over

and above the amount of his rent.

[6] In England, the right to vote is given to tenants at will paying

L50 rent; it was proposed to grant it to those in Ireland who paid L30

rent.

[7] Two judges, who are _ex-officio_ members, may be Roman Catholics;

the numbers would then stand seven and six.

[8] _Bailly's Memoirs._

[9] The Rev. Gregory Lynch of Westland Row, openly charges the

agitating bishops with having _forged_ the signature of many priests

to the protest which they have published against the Charitable

Bequests Bill. See his letter, an extract from which is published in

the Irish correspondence of _The Times_, 27th October.

[10] Extract from the speech of the Rev. Mr Henebury, as reported in

the Irish correspondence of the _Times_ newspaper, July 3, 1844.

[11] _Kohl's Ireland_.

[12] The local newspaper.

[13] Irish correspondent of the _Times_, Nov. 1, 1844.

[14] _Correspondence of the Right Honourable Edmund Burke_. Edited by

Earl Fitzwilliam and Sir Richard Bourke, K.C.B. 4 vols. 8vo.

Rivingtons, London.

[15] _Nelson's Despatches and Letters, with Notes_. By Sir Harris

Nicolas.

[16] Ferguson.

[17] Gibbon.

[18] _Ibid_.

[19] Plin. _Hist. Nat._, xxxiii. 47.

[20] Mr James's Preface to _Mary of Burgundy_.

INDEX TO VOL. LVI.

Affghanistan, 133

general review of the question regarding, 135

motives for the expedition to, 136

means for effecting the objects sought, 141

comparison of the competitors for the throne, 142

resistance to taxation in, 148

causes of the British disasters in, 150, 151.

Agitation the cause of the evils of Ireland, 709.

Alison, Archibald, Esq., speech of, at the Burns' festival, 390.

Ancient canal between the Nile and the Red Sea, historical account

of the, 182.

Artist's morning song, the, from Goethe, 419.

Auckland, Lord, review of his Affghanistan policy, 133.

Aytoun, W. E., Esq., speech of, at the Burns' festival, 392.

Banking System, the Scottish, 671*.

Barrett, Elizabeth B., review of the poems of, 621.

Bell, H. G., Esq., speech of, at the Burns' festival, 389.

Blanc, M., his history of ten years reviewed, 265.

Bossuet, character of, as a historian, 789.

Braxfield, lord, letter relating to, 620.

Brenn, the, a Gaulish chief, career of, 471.

Bride of Corinth, the, from Goethe, 57.

Bruce, heart of the, a ballad, 15.

Burke, Edmund, review of the correspondence of, 745.

Burns' festival, account of the, 370

order of the procession, 373

the banquet, 376

speeches of Lord Eglinton, ib.

Professor Wilson, 378

Sir John McNeill, 388

H.G. Bell, Esq., 389

Archibald Alison, Esq., 390

W. E. Aytoun, Esq., 392

Colonel Mure, 393

Sir James Campbell, the Lord Justice-General, &c., 395

stanzas for, by Delta, 399.

Cabul, the war with, 133.

Campbell, Sir James, speech of, at the Burns' festival, 395.

Canal between the Nile and Red Sea, historical account of the, 182.

Castle on the mountain, the, from Goethe, 425.

Catania, 33.

Catharine of Russia, sketch of, 410.

Causes of the increase of crime, on the, 1

districts in which greatest, ib.

in the manufacturing districts, 6

strikes, 8.

Cavalier, the old Scottish, a ballad, 195.

Clarkson, sonnet to, 619.

Commitments for crime, tables of, 1, 2.

Cours de Litterature Dramatique, review of, 237.

Crime, causes of the increase of, 1

in the manufacturing districts, 6

increase of, by strikes, 8

by infant labour, 9

inefficiency of the proposed preventives of, 13.

Cupid as a landscape painter, from Geothe, 417.

Delphi, defeat of the Gauls at, 472.

Delta, stanzas for the Burns' festival by, 399

the tombless man, a dream, by, 583.

Doleful lay of the noble wife of Asan Aga, the, from Goethe, 67.

Don John and the heretics of Flanders, 36

Part II., 49.

Dost Mohammed, character of, 142.

Dunning, anecdotes of, 249, 264.

Dwarf's well, the, a legend of Upper Lusatia, 196.

Earthquake of Lisbon, the, 102.

Education, effect of imperfect, in Ireland, 708.

Eglinton, the Earl of, speeches of, at the Burns' festival, 376, 395,

396.

Eldon, Lord, sketch of the career of,

his early life, 245

his first struggles, 249

and first success, 251

enters parliament, 253

becomes solicitor-general, 257

attorney-general, 259

chief-justice of the Common Pleas, 262

and lord chancellor, ib.

his subsequent career, 263.

Emperor, week of an

an account of the visit of the Emperor Nicholas, 127.

Erl king, the, from Goethe, 63.

Etched thoughts by the Etching Club, review of, 153.

Execution of Montrose, the, a ballad, 289.

Fairy tutor, the, a legend of Upper Lusatia, 83.

Falkland islands, affair of the, 406.

Finlay's Greece under the Romans, review of, 524.

First love, from Goethe, 61.

Fisher, the, from Goethe, 65.

Fourier and his system, sketch of, 591.

Frederick the Great, anecdotes of, 404, 409.

French socialists, 588.

Galatia, Gaulish kingdom of, 478.

Gauls, Thierry's history of, reviewed, 466.

Gibbon, character of, as a historian, 788.

Girardin, M., 237.

God, the, and the Bayadere, from Goethe, 421.

Goethe, Poems and Ballads of, No. I. Introduction, 54

the bride of Corinth, 57

first love, 61

who'll buy a Cupid? 62

second life, ib.

the erl-king, 63

Mignon, 64

the fisher, 65

the minstrel, ib.

the violet, 66

the doleful lay of the noble wife of Asan Aga, 67

No. II. Cupid as a landscape painter, 417

the artist's morning song, 419

the god and the bayadere, 421

the treasure-seeker, 423

the castle on the mountain, 425

Philine's song, 426

to my mistress, 427

the wild rose, ib.

a night thought, 428

Prometheus, ib.

new love, new life, 429

separation, 430

the magician's apprentice, ib.

Great Britain, increase of crime in, 1.

Great country's little wars, a, review of, 133.

Great drought, the, 433

Chap. II., 436

Chap. III., 438

Chap. IV., 440

Chap. V., 442

Chap. VI., 452.

Greece under the Romans, review of, 524.

Grievances of Ireland, examination of the alleged, 701

the true, 708.

Guizot, M., review of the historical works of, 786.

Hardy, trial of, for high treason, 261.

Harris, James, career of, 401.

Heart of the Bruce, the, a ballad, 15.

Hill, Mr Sergeant, anecdotes of, 247.

Histoire des dix ans, review of, 265.

Historical account of the ancient canal between the Nile and the Red

Sea, 182.

Hope, the Right Hon. Charles, letter from, 620.

Hume, character of, as a historian, 788.

Hydro Bacchus, 77.

Increase of crime, causes of, 1

districts in which greatest, ib.

Infant labour, increase of crime attributable to, 9.

Injured Ireland, 701.

Introduction to his poems, from Goethe, 54.

Ireland, increase of crime in, 1

examination of the question as to the injuries of, 701

its comparative freedom from taxation, 702

its representation in parliament, 703

municipal law, 706

alleged debarring of Roman Catholics from office, 707

true evils of, and their causes, 708.

Irish state trials, reversal of the judgment, 539.

It is no fiction, 364.

Jesuits, expulsion of the, from Portugal, 109

extinction of the order, 112.

Johnson, Dr, anecdotes of, 247, 257.

Knights, last of the

Don John and the heretics of Flanders, 36

Part II., 49.

Lamartine, review of the travels of, 657.

Last of the knights, the

Don John and the heretics of Flanders, 36

Part II., 49.

Lee, J., anecdotes of, 249, 255.

Letter to the editor, from the Right Hon. Charles Hope, 620.

Life in Louisiana, Chap. I., a Voyage on the Red River, 507

Chap. II., Creole life, 514

Chap. III., quite unexpected, 518.

Lines on the landing, of Louis Philippe, by B. Simmons, 654.

Lisbon, the great earthquake of, 102.

Louis Philippe, elevation of, to the throne, 272

lines on the landing of, by B. Simmons, 654.

Louisiana, life in, Chap. I., 507

Chap. II., 514

Chap. III., 518.

Love chase, in prose, a, Chap. I., 164

Chap. II., 166

Chap. III., 170

Chap. IV., 173

Chap. V., 178.

Lunatic asylum of Palermo, the, 20.

Lusatia, traditions and tales of, No. II.,

the fairy tutor, 83

No. III., the dwarf's well, 196

No. IV., the moor maiden, 726.

Lushington on the Affghan war, 133.

Luther, an ode, 80.

Machiavel, character of, as a historian, 787.

McNeill, Sir John, speech of, at the Burns' festival, 388.

Magician's apprentice, the, from Goethe, 430.

Maid of Orleans, remarks on the, 216.

Malmesbury, life of the Earl of, reviewed, 401.

Manufacturing districts, increase of crime in the, 2.

Marston; or, Memoirs of a Statesman

Part XII., 114

Part XIII., 343

Part XIV., 601.

Martin Luther, an ode, 80.

Memoirs of a Statesman--_see_ Marston.

Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal, review of, 100.

Memoranda of a month's tour in Sicily

the museum of Palermo, 20

lunatic asylum, ib.

miscellanea, 21

journey to Segeste, 23

Sicilian inns, 24

approach to Messina, 28

journey to Taormina, 30

Catania, 33

Messina, approach to, 28.

Mignon, from Goethe, 64.

Milkman of Walworth, the, Chap. I., 687

Chap. II., 691

Chap. III., 693

Chap. IV., 696.

Minstrel, the, from Goethe, 65.

Montesquieu, character of, as a historian, 789.

Montrose, execution of, a ballad, 289.

Moor maiden, the, 726.

Mure, Colonel, speech of, at the Burns' festival, 393.

Museum of Palermo, the, 20.

My college friends

No. I. John Brown, 569

No. II., the same concluded, 763.

My first love, a sketch in New York, 69.

My last courtship; or, life in Louisiana

Chap. I. A voyage on the Red River, 507

Chap. II., Creole life, 514

Chap. III., quite unexpected, 518.

Natural history of man, Prichard's, review of, 312.

Nelson's dispatches and letters, review of, 775.

New love, new life, from Goethe, 429.

Nicholas, the Emperor, visit of, to Great Britain, 127.

Night on the banks of the Tennessee, a, 278.

Night thought, a, from Goethe, 428.

Nile and the Red Sea, the, historical account of the ancient canal

between, 182.

North, Lord, anecdotes of, 255.

O'Connell case, the

Was the judgment rightly reversed? 539

statement of the case, 541

the indictment, 542

verdict of the jury, 544

the motion in arrest of judgment, 545

the judgment, ib.

the writ of error, ib.

opinions of the judges, 548

and of the peers, 553

general remarks on the case, 561

Old Scottish cavalier, the, a ballad, by W. E. A., 195.

Oporto wine company, origin of the, 106.

Palermo, sketches of, 20.

Passages in the life of a Russian officer, 713.

Patmore's poems, review of, 331.

Philine's song, from Goethe, 426.

Poems and ballads of Goethe, the

No. I. Introduction, 54

the bride of Corinth, 57

first love, 61

who'll buy a Cupid, 62

second life, ib.

the erl-king, 63

Mignon, 64

the fisher, 65

the minstrel, ib.

the violet, 66

the doleful lay of the noble wife of Asan Aga, 67

No. II. Cupid as a landscape painter, 417

the artist's morning song, 419

the god and the bayadere, 421

the treasure-seeker, 423

the castle on the mountain, 425

Philine's song, 426

to my mistress, 427

the wild rose, ib.

a night thought, 428

Prometheus, ib.

new love, new life, 429

separation, 430

the magician's apprentice, ib.

Poetry:

The heart of the Bruce, 15

poems and ballads of Goethe, No. I., 54

Hydro Bacchus, 77

Martin Luther, an ode, 80

the old Scottish cavalier, 195

the execution of Montrose 289

stanzas for the Burns' festival, by Delta, 399

poems and ballads of Goethe, No. II., 417

the tombless man, by Delta, 583

sonnet to Clarkson, 619

Westminster hall and the works of art, by B. Simmons, 652

lines on the landing of Louis Philippe, by the same, 654

"That's what we are," 741.

Poland, the partition of, 405, 407.

Pombal, Marquis of, sketch of the career of, 100.

Portugal, history of, during the administration of the Marquis of

Pombal, 100.

Prichard's natural history of man, review of, 312.

Prometheus, from Goethe, 428.

Ptolemy, completion of the canal between the Nile and the Red Sea by,

185.

Radzivil, Prince, sketch of, 406.

Red Sea and the Nile, history of the ancient canal between, 182.

Remarks on Schiller's maid of Orleans, 216.

Reviews:

Smith's memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal, 100

Lushington's a great country's little wars, 133

Etched thoughts by the Etching Club, 153

M. Girardin's cours de litterature dramatique, 237

Twiss's memoirs of the Earl of Eldon, 245

Blanc's histoire de dix ans, 265

Prichard's natural history of man, 312

Poems by Coventry Patmore, 331

Life of Lord Malmesbury, 401

Thierry's history of the Gauls, 466

Finlay's Greece under the Romans, 524

Reybaud on French socialism, 588

Poems by Elizabeth B. Barrett, 621

Lamartine's travels, 657

Burke's correspondence, 745

Neson's despatches and letters, 775

Guizot, 786.

Reybaud on French socialism, review of, 588.

Robertson, character of, as a historian, 790.

Russian officer, passages in the life of a, 713.

St Simon, sketch of, 273.

Schiller's maid of Orleans, remarks on, 216.

Scotland, increase of crime in, 1.

Scott, Sir John _see_ Eldon.

Scott, Sir William, sketches of, 246, 254.

Scottish banking system, the, 671*.

Scottish cavalier, the, a ballad, 195.

Scottish peasantry, character of the, 370.

Second life, from Goethe, 62.

Segeste, journey to, 23.

Separation, from Goethe, 430.

Shah Soojah, character of, 143.

Sicilian inns, 24.

Sicily, memorandum of a month's tour in

the museum of Palermo, 20

the lunatic asylum, ib.

miscellanea, 21

journey to Segeste, 23

Sicilian inns, 24

approach to Messina, 28

journey to Taormina, 30

Catania, 33.

Simmons, B., Westminster hall and the works of art by, 652

lines on the landing of Louis Philippe by, 654.

Sismondi, character of, as a historian, 792.

Sketch in New York, a My first love, 69.

Smith's memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal, review of, 100.

Socialism in France, history of, 588.

Some remarks on Schiller's maid of Orleans, 216.

Sonnet to Clarkson, 619.

Stanzas for the Burns' festival, by Delta, 299.

Stolen child, the, a true tale of the Backwoods, 227.

Stowell, Lord, sketches of, 246, 254.

Strikes as a cause of the increase of crime, 8.

Taormina, journey to, 30.

Taxation, resistance to, in Affghanistan, 149

comparative lightness of in Ireland, 702.

Tender conscience, a, 454.

Tennessee, a night on the banks of the, 278.

"That's what we are," a poem, 741.

Thierry's history of the Gauls, review of, 466.

Thurlow, Lord, anecdotes of, 258, 259, 263.

To my mistress, from Goethe, 427.

Tombless man, the, a dream, by Delta, 583.

Traditions and tales of Upper Lusatia, No. II., the fairy tutor, 83

No. III., the dwarf's well, 196

No. IV., the moor maiden, 726.

Treasure seeker, the, from Goethe, 423.

Twiss's life of Lord Eldon, review of, 245.

Up stream; or steam-boat reminiscences, 64.

Violet, the, from Goethe, 66.

Voltaire, character of, as a historian, 787.

W. E. A., Heart of the Bruce by, 15

the old Scottish cavalier by, 195

the execution of Montrose, by, 289.

Walworth, the milkman of, 687.

Week of an emperor, the, 127.

Westminster hall and the works of art on a free admission day, by B.

Simmons, 652.

Who'll buy a Cupid, from Goethe, 62.

Wild rose, the, from Goethe, 427.

Wilson, Professor, speech of, at the Burns' festival, 378.

Witchfinder, the Part I., 297

conclusion, 487.

Writ of error, proceedings on the, 545.

END OF VOL. LVI.

_Edinburgh: Printed by Ballantyne and Hughes, Paul's Work_.

Transcriber's Notes:

Passages in italics are indicated by underscore _italics_.

The following misprints have been corrected:

"corresspondence" corrected to "correspondence" (page 755)

"headach" corrected to "headache" (page 768)

"subsisttence" corrected to "subsistence" (page 798)

The original text included Greek charcters. For this text version these

letters have been replaced with *Greek* transliterations.

Additional spacing after some of the block quotes is intentional to

indicate both the end of a quotation and the beginning of a new

paragraph as presented in the original text.