"[Blackje &f Son L,imited Private Libra7y Case .do.a Shelf ...:.. /\: ESSAYS PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. ,E S S A Y S POLITICAL, HISTORICAL, A^'D MISCELLANEOUS AECHIBALD ALISON, L.L.D, AUTHOR OF THE " HISTOKY OF EUEOPE, ETC. VOL. III. WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND tSONS EDINBUEGH AND LONDON MDCCCL CONTENTS OF VOL. Ill, CHATEAUBRIAXD, VIRGIL, TASSO, AXD RAPHAEL, . GUIZOT, .... THE ROMANTIC DRAMA, WELLINGTON, .... HUMBOLDT, .... THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE, SISMONDI, .... POLAND, THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS, BRITISH HISTORY DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY, MADAME DE STAEL, M. DE TOCQUEVILLE, AUTOBIOGRAPHY, MICHELET'S FRANCE, THE FALL OF ROME, KARAMSIN'S RUSSIA, THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE, THE BRITISH THEATRE, DIRECT TAXATION, MACAULAY, .... FREE-TRADE REFORM AND FINANCE, THE ROYAL PROGRESS, PACK 1 42 73 105 139 169 199 220 256 278 311 340 358 385 411 440 497 521 551 597 628 675 720 MISCELLANEOUS ESSAYS CHITEAUBKIAND [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, March 1832] Chateaubriand is universally allowed by the French, of all parties, to be their first writer. His merits, ho^yeYer, are but little understood in this country. He is known as once a minister of Louis XVIII., and ambassador of that monarch in London; as the writer of many celebrated political pamphlets ; and the victim, since the Revolution of 1830, of his noble and ill-requited devotion to the unfortunate family. Few are aware that he is, without one single exception, the most eloquent writer of the present age ; that, independent of politics, he has produced many works on morals, rehgion, and history, destined for lasting endurance; that his writings combine the strongest love of rational freedom with the warmest inspiration of Christian devotion ; that he is, as it were, the hnk between the feudal and the revolutionary ages — retaining from the former its generous and elevated feeling, and inhaling from the latter its acute and fearless investigation. The last pilgrim, with devout feelings, to the Holy Sepulchre, he was the first supporter of constitutional freedom in France ; discarding thus from former times their bigoted fury, and from modern, their infidel spirit ; blending all that was noble in the ardour of the Crusades, with all that is generous in the enthusiasm of freedom. It is the glory of the Conservative Party throughout the world — and by this party we mean all who are desirous in VOL. III. A 2 CHATEAUBPJAXD. eycrj country to iipbold the religion, the institutions, and the liberties of their fathers — that the two greatest writers of the age have devoted their talents to the support of their principles. Sir Walter Scott and Chateaubriand are beyond all question, and by the consent of both nations, at the head of the literature of France and England since the Revolution ; and they will both leave names at which the latest posterity will feel proud, wlien the multitudes who have sought to rival them on the revolutionary side are buried in the weaves of forgotten time. It is no small triumph to the cause of order in these trying days, that these mighty spirits, destined to instruct and bless mankind through every succeeding age, should have proved so true to the principles of virtue ; and the patriot may well rejoice that generations yet unborn, while they approach their immortal shrines, or share in the enjoyments derived from the legacies they have bequeathed to mankind, will inhale only a holy spirit, and derive from the pleasures of imagination nothing but additional induce- ments to the performance of duty. Both these great men are now under an eclipse, too likely, in one at least, to terminate in earthly extinction. The first lies on the bed, if not of material, at least, it is to be feared, of intellectual death ; and the second, arrested by the military despotism which he so long strove to avert from his country, has lately awaited in the solitude of a prison the fate destined for him by revolutionary violence.'" But " Stone walls do not a prison make, Xor iron bars a cage ; Minds innocent and quiet take That for an hermitage." It is in such moments of gloom and depression, when the fortune of the world seems most adverse, when the ties of mortality are about to be dissolved, or the career of virtue is on the point of being terminated, that the immortal supe- riority of genius and virtue most strongly appear. In vain is the Scottish bard extended on the bed of sickness, and the French patriot confined to the gloom of a dungeon ; their works remain to perpetuate their lasting sway over the minds of men ; and while their mortal frames are sinkiu^^ o * Sir Walter Scott, at this period, was on his deathbed, and Chateaubriand imprisoned by order of Louis Philippe. CHATEAUBRIAND. 3 beneath the sufferings of the world, their immortal souls rise into the region of spirits, to witness a triumph more glorious, an ascendencj more enduring, than ever attended the arms of Csesar or Alexander. Though pursuing the same pure and ennobling career, though gifted with the same ardent imagination, and steeped in the same fountains of ancient lore, no two writers were ever more different than Chateaubriand and Sir Walter Scott. The great characteristic of the French author, is the impassioned and enthusiastic turn of liis mind. Master of immense information, thoroughly imbued at once with the learning of classical and catholic times ; gifted with a retentive memory, a poetical fancy, and a painter's eye, he brings to bear upon every subject the force of erudition, the images of poetry, the charm of varied scenery, and the eloquence of impassioned feeling. Hence his writings display a reach and variety of imagery, a depth of light and sliadow, a vigour of thought, and an extent of illustration, to which there is nothing comparable in any other writer, ancient or modern, with whom we are acquainted. All that he has seen, or read, or heard, seems present to his mind, whatever he does, or wherever he is. He illustrates the genius of Christianity by the beauties of classical learning ; inhales the spirit of ancient prophecy on the shores of the Jordan ; dreams on the banks of the Eurotas of the solitude and gloom of the American forests ; visits the Holy Sepulcln^e with a mind alternately excited by the devotion of a pilgrim, the curiosity of an antiquary, and the enthusiasm of a crusader ; and combines in his romances, with the tender feelings of chivalrous love, the heroism of Roman virtue and the sublimity of Christian martyrdom. His writings are less a faithful portrait of any particular age or country, than an assemblage of all that is grand, and generous, and elevated in human nature. He drinks deep of inspiration at all the fountains where it has ever been poured forth to mankind, and deliglits us less by the accuracy of any particular picture, than by the traits of genius which he has combined from every quarter where its footsteps have trod. His style seems formed on the lofty strains of Isaiah, or the beautiful images of the Book of Job, more than all the classical or modern literature with whicli his mind is so amply stored. He is 4 CHATEAUBRIA^'D. admitted by all Frcnchincu, of whatever party, to be tlie most perfect living master of their language, and to have gained for it beauties unknown to the age of Bossuet and Fenclon. Less polished in his periods, less sonorous in his diction, less melodious in his rhythm, than these illustrious writers, he is incomparably more varied, rapid, and energetic ; his ideas flow in quicker succession, his words follow in more striking antithesis ; the past, the present, and the future rise up at once before us ; and we see how strongly the stream of genius, instead of gliding down the smooth current of ordinary life, lias been broken and agitated by the cataract of revolution. With far less classical learning, fewer images derived from travelling, inferior information on many historical subjects, and a mind of a less impassioned and energetic cast, our own Sir AY alter is far more deeply read in that book which is ever the same — the human heart. This is his unequalled excellence : there he stands, without a rival since the days of Shakspeare. It is to this cause that his astonishing success has been owing. We feel in his characters that it is not romance, but real life which is represented. Every word that is said, especially in the Scotch novels, is nature itself. Homer, Cervantes, Shakspeare, and Scott, alone have penetrated to the deep substratum of character, which, however disguised by the varieties of climate and govern- ment, is at bottom everywhere the same ; and thence they have found a responsive echo in every human heart. Every man who reads tliese admirable works, from the North Cape to Cape Horn, feels that what the characters they contain are made to say, is just what would liave occurred to them- selves, or what they have heard said by others as long as they lived. Nor is it only in the delineation of character, and the knowledge of human nature, that the Scottish novelist, like his great predecessors, is but for them without a rival. Powerful in the pathetic, admirable in dialogue, unmatched in description, his writings captivate the mind as much by the varied excellencies which they exhibit, as by the powerful interest which they maintain. He has carried romance out of the region of imagination and sensibility into the walks of actual life. We feel interested in his characters, not because thev arc ideal beings with whom we CHATEAUBRIAND. 5 liave become acquainted for the first time when we began the book, but because thej are the very persons we have lived witli from our infancy. His descriptions of scenery are not luxuriant and glowing pictures of imaginary beauty, like those of Mrs Radcliffe, having no resemblance to actual nature, but faithful and graphic portraits of real scenes, drawn with the eye of a poet, but the fidelity of a con- summate draughtsman. He has combined historical accuracy and romantic adventure with the interest of tragic events : we live with the heroes, and princes, and paladins of former times, as with our own contemporaries ; and acquire from the splendid colouring of his pencil such a vivid conception of the manners and pomp of the feudal ages, that we con- found them, in our recollections, with the scenes which we ourselves have witnessed. The splendour of their tourna- ments, the magnificence of their dress, the glancing of their arms ; their haughty manners, daring courage, and knightly courtesy ; the shock of their battle-steeds, the splintering of their lances, the conflagration of their castles, are brought before our eyes in such vivid colours, that we are at once transported to the age of Richard and Saladin, of Bruce and Marmion, of Charles the Bold and Pliilip Augustus. Disdaining to flatter the passions, or pander to the ambition of the populace, he has done more than any man alive to elevate their character, to fill their minds with the noble sentiments which dignify alike the cottage and the palace, to exhibit the triumph of virtue in the humblest stations over all that the world calls great, and, without ever indul- ging a sentiment which might turn them from the scenes of their real usefulness, to bring home to every mind the '• might that slumbers in a peasant's arm." Above all, he has uni- formly, in all his varied and extensive productions, shown himself true to the cause of virtue. Amidst all the innumer- able combinations of character, event, and dialogue, which he has formed, he has ever proved faithful to the polar star of duty ; and alone, perhaps, of the great romance writers of the world, has not left a line which on his deathbed he would wish recalled. Of such men France and England may well be proud ; shining, as they already do, through the clouds and the passions of a fleeting existence, they are destined soon to 6 CHATEAUBRIAND. illuminate the world with a purer lustre, and ascend to that elevated station in the higher heavens where the fixed stars shed a splendid and imperishable light. The writers whom party has elevated, the genius which vice has seduced, are destined to decline with the interests to which they were devoted, or the passions by which they were misled. The rise of new political struggles will consign to oblivion the vast talent which was engulfed in the contention ; the acces- sion of a more virtuous age buries in the dust the fancy which was enlisted in the cause of corruption ; while these illustri- ous men, whose writings have struck root in the inmost recesses of the human heart, and been watered by the streams of imperishable feeling, will for ever continue to elevate and bless a grateful world. To form a just conception of the importance of Chateau- briand's Genius of Christianity, we must recollect the period when it was published, the character of the works it was intended to combat, and the state of society in which it was destined to appear. For half a century before it appeared, the whole genius of France had been incessantly directed to undermine the principles of religion. The days of Pascal and Fenelon, of Saurin and Bourdaloue, of Bossuet and Massillon, had passed away ; the splendid talent of the seventeenth century was no longer arrayed in the support of virtue ; the supremacy of the church had ceased to be exerted to thunder in the ear of princes the awful truths of judgment to come. Borne away in the torrent of corrup- tion, the church itself had yielded to the increasing vices of the age ; its hierarchy had become involved in the passions they were destined to combat ; and the cardinal's purple covered the shoulders of an associate in the midnight orgies of the Regent Orleans. Such was the audacity of vice, the recklessness of fashion, and the supineness of religion, that Madame Roland tells us, what astonished her in her youthful days was, that the heaven itself did not open to rain down upon the guilty metropolis, as on tlie cities of the Jordan, a tempest of consuming fire. While such was the profligacy of power and the audacity of crime, philosophic talent lent its aid to overwhelm the remaining safeguards of religious belief. The middle and tlie lower orders could not, indeed, participate in the luxu- CHATEAUBRIAXD. 7 rious vices of their wealthy superiors, but they could well be persuaded that the faith which permitted such enormities, the religion which was stained by such crimes, was a system of hypocrisy and deceit. The passion for innovation, which more than any other feature characterised that period in France, invaded the precincts of religion as well as the bulwarks of the state : the throne and the altar, the re- straints of this world and the next, as is ever the case, crumbled together. For half a century, all the genius of France had been incessantly directed to overturn the sanctity of Christianity ; its corruptions were represented as its very essence, its abuses as part of its necessary effects. Ridicule, ever more powerful than reason with a frivolous age, lent its aid to overturn the defenceless fabric ; and for more than one generation, not one writer of note had appeared to maintain the hopeless cause. Voltaire and Diderot, d'Alembert and Raynal, Laplace and Lagrange, had lent the weight of their illustrious names, or the powers of their versatile minds, to carry on the war. The Encyclopedie was a vast battery of infidelity incessantly directed against Christianity ; while the crowd of licentious novelists, with which the age abounded — Louvet, Crebillon, Laclos, and a host of others — insinuated the poison, mixed up with the strongest allurements to the passions, and the most volup- tuous seductions to the senses. This inundation of infidelity was soon followed by sterner days ; to the unrestrained indulgence of passion succeeded the unfettered march of crime. With the destruction of all the bonds which held society together, with the removal of all the restraints on vice or guilt, the fabric of civilisation and religion was speedily dissolved. To the licentious orgies of the Regent Orleans succeeded the infernal fury of the Revolution ; from the same Palais Royal from whence had sprung those fountains of courtlj corruption, soon issued forth the fiery streams of democracy. Enveloped in this burning torrent, the institutions, the faith, the nobles, the throne, were destroyed ; the worst instruments of the Supreme Justice, the passions and ambition of men, were suffered to work their unresisted way ; and in a few years the religion of eighteen centuries was abolished, its priests slain or exiled, its Sabbath abolished, its rites proscribed, 8 CHATEAUBEIAKD. its faitli unknoT\'n. Infancy came into the world ^yithoufc a blessing, age left it without a hope ; marriage no longer received a benediction, sickness was left without con- solation ; the village bell ceased to call the poor to their weekly day of sanctity and repose ; the village churchyard to witness the weeping train of mourners attending their rude forefathers to their last home. The grass grew in the churches of every parish in France ; the dead without a blessing were thrust into vast charnel-houses ; marriage was contracted before a civil magistrate ; and infancy, untaught to pronounce the name of God, longed only for the period when the passions and indulgences of life were to com- mence. It was in these disastrous days that Chateaubriand arose, and bent the force of his lofty mind to restore the fallen but imperishable faith of his fathers. In early youth, he was at first carried away by the fashionable infidelity of his times ; and in his Essais Historiques, which he published in 1792 in London, while the principles of virtue and natural religion are unceasingly maintained, he seems to have doubted whether the Christian religion was not crumbling with the institutions of society, and speculated what faith was to be estabhshed on its ruins. But misfortune, that great corrector of the vices of the world, soon changed these faulty views. In the days of exile and adversity, when by the waters of Babylon he sat down and wept, he reverted to the faith and the belief of his fathers, and inhaled in the school of adversity those noble maxims of devotion and duty which have ever since regulated his conduct in life. Undaunted, though alone, he placed himself on the ruins of the Christian faith ; renewed, with Herculean strengtli, a contest which the talents and vices of half a century had to all appearance rendered hopeless ; and, speaking to the hearts of men, now purified by suffering, and cleansed by the agonising ordeal of revolution, scattered far and wide the seeds of a rational and manly piety. Other writers have followed in the same noble career : Salvandy and Guizot have traced the beneficial effects of religion upon modern society, and drawn from the last results of revolutionary experience just and sublime conclusions as to the adaptation of Christianity to the wants of humanity ; but it is the glory of Chateaubriand CHATEAUBRIAND. 9 to have come forth alone the foremost in the fight ; to have planted himself on the breach, when it was stre^Yecl only Avith the dying and dead, and, strong in the consciousness of gigantic powers, stood undismayed against a nation in arms. To be successful in the contest, it was indispensable that the weapons of warfare should be totally changed. When the ideas of men were set adrift by revolutionary changes, when the authority of ages was set at naught, and from centuries of experience appeals were made to weeks of inno- Tation, it was in yain to refer to the great or the wise of former ages. Perceiving at once the immense change that had taken place in the world which he addressed, Chateau- briand saw that he must alter altogether the means by which it was to be influenced. Disregarding, therefore, entirely the weight of authority, laying aside almost everything which had been advanced in support of religion by its professed disciples, he applied himself to accumulate the conclusions in its favour which arose from its internal beauty ; from its beneficent effect upon society ; from the changes it had wrought upon the civilisation, the happiness, and destinies of mankind ; from its analogy with the sublimest tenets of natural religion ; from its unceasing pro- gress, its indefinite extension, and undecaying youth. He observed that it drew its support from such hidden recesses of the human heart, that it flourished most in periods of disaster and calamity ; derived strength from the fountains of suflPering, and, banished in all but form from the palaces of princes, spread its roots far and wide in the cottages of the poor. From the intensity of suffering produced by the Revolution, therefore, he conceived the hope that the feelings of religion would ultimately resume their sway ; when the waters of bitterness were let loose, the consolations of devotion would again be felt to be indispensable ; and the spirit of the Gospel, banished during the sunshine of corrupt prosperity, return to the repentant human heart with the tears and the storms of adversity. Proceeding on these just and sublime principles, this great author availed himself of every engine which fancy, expe- rience, or poetry could suggest, to sway the hearts of his readers. He knew well that he was addressing an impas- 10 CHATEAUBRIAND. siouecl and volatile generation, npon whom reason wonld be thrown away, if not enforced with eloquence ; and argument lost, if not clothed in the garb of fancy. To effect his purpose, therefore, of reopening in the hearts of liis readers the all but extinguished fountains of religious feeling, he summoned to his aid all that learning, or travelling, or poetry, or fancy could supply ; and scrupled not to employ his powers as a writer of romance, a historian, a descriptive traveller, and a poet, to forward the great work of Chris- tian renovation. Of his object in doing this, he has him- self given the following account : — " There can be no donbt that the Genius of Christianity would have been a work entirely out of place in the age of Louis XIV. ; and the critic who observed that Massillon would never have published such a book, spoke an undoubted truth. Most certainly the author would never have thought of writing such a work if there had not existed a host of poems, romances, and books of all sorts, where Christianity was exposed to every species of deri- sion. But since these poems, romances, and books exist, and are in every one's hands, it becomes indispensable to extricate religion from the sar- casms of impiety ; when it has been written on all sides that Christianity is ' barbarous^ jidicidoKS^ the eternal enemy of the arts and of genius ; ' it is necessary to prove that it is neither barbarous, nor ridiculous, nor the enemy of arts or of genius ; and that that which is made by the pen of ridicule to appear diminutive, ignoble, in bad taste, without either charms or tenderness, may be made to appear grand, noble, simple, impressive, and divine, in the hands of a man of religious feeling. '■'■ If it is not permitted to defend religion on what may be called its ter- restrial side^ if no effort is to be made to prevent ridicule from attaching to its sublime institutions, there will always remain a weak and undefended quarter. Tliere all the strokes at it will be aimed ; there you will be caught without defence ; from thence you will receive your death-wound. Is not that what has already arrived ? Was it not by ridicule and plea- santry that Voltaire succeeded in shaking the foundations of faith ? Will you attempt to answer by theological arguments, or the forms of the syllogism, licentious novels or irreligious epigrams ? Will formal disquisitions ever prevent an infidel generation from being carried away by clever verses, or deterred from the altar by the fear of ridicule ? Does not every one know that in the French nation a happy bon-mot^ impiety clothed in a felicitous expression, nfelix culpa, produce a greater effect than volumes of reasoning or metaphysics? Persuade young men that an honest man can be a Chris- tian without being a fool ; convince him that he is in error when he believes that none but capuchins and old women believe in religion, and your cause is gained: it will be time enough, to complete the victory, to present your- self armed with theological reasons ; but what you must begin with is, an inducement to read your book. What is most needed is a popular Mork on religion. Those who have hitherto Avritten on it have too often fallen into the error of the traveller who tries to get his companion at one ascent to the summit of a rugged mountain when he can hardly crawl at its foot : you must show him at every step varied and agreeable objects ; allow him to stop to gather the flowers which are scattered along his path ; and from one resting-place to another he will at length gain the summit. '' The author has not intended this work merely for scholars, priests, or CHATEAUBRIAXD. 1 1 doctors ; what he wrote for was the men of the world, aud what he aimed at chiefly were the considerations calculated to affect their minds. If you do not keep steadily in view that principle, if you forget for a moment the class of readers for whom the Genius of Christianity was intended, you will under- stand nothing of this work. It was intended to be read by the most incre- dulous man of letters, the most volatile youth of pleasure, with the same facility as the first turns over a work of impiety, or the second devours a corrupting novel. Do you intend then, exclaim the well-meaning advocates for Christianity, to render religion a matter of fashion? Would to God, I reply, that that divine religion was really in fashion, in the sense that what is fashionable indicates the prevailing opinion of the world ! Individual hypocrisy, indeed, might be increased by such a change, but public morality would unquestionably be a gainer. The rich would no longer make it a point of vanity to corrupt the poor, the master to pervert the mind of his domestic, the fathers of families to pour lessons of atheism into their chil- dren : the practice of piety would lead to a belief in its truths, and with the devotion we should see revive the manners and the virtues of the best ages of the world. " Voltaire, when he attacked Christianity, knew mankind well enough not to seek to avail himself of what is called the opinion of the worlds and with that view he employed his talents to bring impiety into fashion. He succeeded by rendering religion ridiculous in the eyes of a frivolous gene- ration: It is this ridicule which the author of the Genius of Christianity has, beyond everything, sought to efface ; that was the object of his work. He may have failed in the execution, but the object surely was highly important. To consider Christianity in its relation with human society ; to trace the changes Avhich it has effected in the reason and the passions of man ; to show how it has modified the genius of arts and of letters, moulded the spirit of modern nations ; in a word, to unfold all the marvels which religion has wrought in the regions of poetry, morality, politics, history, and public charity, must always be esteemed a noble imdertaking. As to its execution, he abandons himself, with submission, to the criticisms of those who appreciate the spirit of the design. " Take, for example, a picture, professedly of an impious tendency, and place beside it another picture on the same subject from the Genius of Christianity, and I will venture to affirm that the latter picttire, however feebly executed, will weaken the impression of the first ; so powerful is the effect of simple truth when compared to the most brilliant sophisms. Vol- taire has frequently turned the religious orders into ridicule : well, put be- side one of his burlesque representations the chapter on the Missions, that where the order of the Hospitallers is depicted as succouring the travellers in the desert ; or the monks relieving the sick in the hospitals, attending those dying of the plague in the lazarettos, or accompanying the criminal to the scaffold, — what irony will not be disarmed? what malicious smile will not be converted into tears? Answer the reproaches made to the worship of the Christians for their ignorance, by appealing to the immense labours of the ecclesiastics who saved from destruction the manuscripts of antiquity. Reply to the accusations of bad taste and barbarity, by referring to the works of Bossuet and Fenelon, Oppose to the caricatures of saints and of angels, the sublime effects of Christianity on the dramatic part of poetry, on eloquence, and the fine arts, and say whether the impression of ridicule will long maintain its ground ! Should the author have no other success than that of having displayed before the eyes of an infidel age a long series of religious pictures without exciting disgust, he would deem his labours not useless to the cause of humanity." — Vol. iii. 263, 266. These observations appear to us as just as they are pro- 12 CHATEAUBRIAND. found ; and tliej are the reflections not merely of a sincere Cliristian, but of a man practically acquainted Ayitli the state of the world. It is of the utmost importance, no doubt, that there should exist works on the Christian faith, in which the arguments of the sceptic should be combated, and to which the Christian disciple might refer with confidence for a refutation of the objections which have been urged against his religion. But great as is the merit of such pro- ductions, their beneficial effects are limited in their opera- tion compared with those w^hich are produced by such writings as we are considering. The hardened sceptic w^ill never turn to a work on divinity for a solution of his para- doxes ; and men of the world can never be persuaded to enter on serious arguments even on the most momentous subject of human belief It is the indifference, not the scepticism of such men, which is chiefly to be dreaded : the danger to be apprehended is not that they will say there is no God, but that they will live altogether without God in the world. It has happened but too frequently that divines, in their zeal for the progress of Christianity among such men, have augmented the very evil they intended to remove. They have addressed themselves in general to them as if they Tvere combatants drawn out in a theological dispute ; they have urged a mass of arguments w^hich they were unable to refute, but which were too uninteresting to be even exam- ined ; and while they flattered themselves that they had effectually silenced their opponents' objections, those w^hom they addressed have silently passed by on the other side. It is, therefore, of incalculable importance that some writings should exist which should lead men imperceptihly into the ways of truth^ w^hich should insinuate themselves into the tastes, and blend themselves with the refinements of ordi- nary life, and perpetually recur to the cultivated mind with all that it admires, or loves, or venerates, in the world. Nor let it be imagined that reflections such as these are not the appropriate theme of religious instruction — that they do not form the fit theme of Christian meditation. Whatever leads our minds habitually to the Author of the Universe ; whatever mingles the voice of nature with the revelation of the Gospel ; whatever teaches us to see, in CHATEAUBEIAXD. 13 all the changes of the world the yaried goodness of Him in whom " we live, and move, and have our being," brings us nearer to the spirit of the Saviour of mankind. But it is not only as encouraging a sincere devotion, that these reflections are favourable to Christianity ; there is some- thing, moreoYer, peculiarly allied to its spirit in such obser- vations of external nature. When our Saviour prepared himself for his temptation, his agony, and death, he retired to the wilderness of Judaea, to inhale, we may venture to beheve, a holier spirit amidst its solitary scenes, and to approach to a nearer communion with his Father, amidst the sublimest of his works. It is with similar feelino^s, and to worship the same Father, that the Christian is per- mitted to enter the temple of nature ; and by the spirit of his religion, there is a language infused into the objects which she presents, unknown to the worshipper of former times. To all indeed the same objects appear — the same sun shines — the same heavens are open, but to the Chris- tian alone it is permitted to know the author of these things; to see His spirit " move in the breeze and blossom in the spring ; " and to read, in the changes which occur in the material world, the varied expression of eternal love. It is from the influence of Christianity accordingly that the key has been given to the signs of nature. It was only when the Spirit of God moved on the face of the deep, that order and beauty were seen in the world. It is accordingly pecuharly well worthy of observation, that the heauty of nature, as felt in modern times, seems to have been almost unknown to the writers of antiquity. They described occasionally the scenes in which they dwelt ; but, if we except Virgil, whose gentle mind seems to have anticipated, in this instance, the influence of the Gospel, never with any deep Feeling of their beauty. Then, as now, the citadel of Athens looked upon the evening sun, and her temples flamed in his setting beam ; but what Athenian writer ever described the matchless glories of the scene 1 Then, as now, the silvery clouds of the ^Egean sea rolled round her verdant isles, and sported in the azure vault of heaven ; but what Grecian poet has been inspired by the sight ? The Italian lakes spread their waves beneath a cloudless sky, and all that is lovely in nature was gathered 14 CHATEAUBEIA^'D. aroimcl them ; jet even Eustace tells us, that a few de- tached lines is all that is left in regard to them bj the Roman poets. The Alps themselves, *' The palaces of nature, whose vast walls Have pinnacled in clouds their snowy scalps, And throned eternity in icy halls Of cold sublimity, where forms and falls The avalanche — the thunderbolt of snow, — •" Even these, the most glorious objects which the eye of man can behold, were regarded bj the ancients with sentiments only of dismay or horror ; as a barrier from hostile nations, or as the dwellino- of barbarous tribes. The torch of relioion a o had not then lightened the face of nature ; they knew not the language which she spoke, nor felt that holy spirit which to the Christian gives the sublimity of these scenes. Chateaubriand divides his great work into four parts. The first treats of the doctrinal parts of religion ; the second and the third, of the relations of that religion with poetry, literature, and the arts ; the fourth, of the ceremonies of public worship, and the services rendered to mankind by the clergy, regular and secular. On the mysteries of faith he commences with these fine observations : — "There is nothing beautiful, sweet, or grand in life, but has its mystery. The sentiments which agitate us most strongly are enveloped in obscurity ; modesty, virtuous love, sincere friendship, have all their secrets, with which the world must not be made acquainted. Hearts which love understand each other by a word ; half of each is at all times open to the other. Inno- cence itself is but a holy ignorance, and the most ineffable of mysteries. Infancy is only happy because it as yet knows nothing; age miserable because it has nothing more to learn. Happily for it, when the mysteries of life are ending, those of immortality commence. '"' If it is thus with the sentiments, it is assuredly not less so with the virtues; the most angelic are those which, emanating directly from the Deity, such as charity, love to withdraw themselves from all regards, as if fearful to betray their celestial origin. " If we turn to the understanding, we shall find that the pleasures of thought also have a certain connexion with the mysterious. To what sciences do we unceasingly return ? To those which always leave something still to be discovered, and fix our regards on a perspective which is never to terminate. If we wander in the desert, a sort of instinct leads us to shun the plains where the eye embraces at once the whole circumference of nature, to plunge into forests, those forests the cradle of religion, wliose shades and solitudes are filled with the recollections of prodigies, where the raA^ens and the doves nourished the prophets and fathers of the church. If we visit a modern monument, whose origin or destination is known, it excites no attention ; but if we meet on a desert isle, in the midst of the ocean, with a mutilated statue pointing to the west, with its pedestal covered with hiero- glyphics, and worn by the winds, what a subject of meditation is presented CHATEAUBRIAND. 15 to the traveller! Everytliing is concealed, everything is hidden in the universe. Man himself is the greatest mystery of the whole. Whence comes the spark which we call existence, and in what obscurity is it to be extinguished? The Eternal has placed our birth and our death under the form of two veiled phantoms, at the two extremities of our career ; the one produces the inconceivable gift of life, which the other is ever ready to devour. " It is not surprising, then, considering the passion of the human mind for the mysterious, that the religions of every country should have had their impenetrable secrets. God forbid that I should compare their mysteries to those of the true faith, or the unfathomable depths of the Sovereign in the heavens, to the changing obscurities of those gods which are the work of human hands. All that I observe is, that there is no religion without mysteries, and that it is they with the sacrifice which everywhere constitute the essence of the worship. God is the great secret of nature : the Deity was veiled in Egvpt, and the Sphynx was seated at the entrance of his temples."— Vol. i." 13, 14. On tlie three great sacraments of the Church — Baptism, Confession, and the Communion — he makes the following beautiful observations : — " Baptism, the first of the sacraments which religion confers upon man, clothes him, in the words of the Apostle, with Jesus Christ. That sacra- ment reveals at once the corruption in which we were born, the agonising pains which attended our birth, and the tribulations which follow us into the world ; it tells us that our faults will descend upon our children, and that we are all jointly responsible — a terrible truth, which, if duly considered, would alone suflBce to render the reign of virtue universal in the world. " Behold the infant in the midst of the waters of the Jordan ! The Man of the Wilderness pours the purifying stream on his head ; the river of the Patriarchs, the camels on its banks, the Temple of Jerusalem, the cedars of Lebanon, seem to regard with interest the mighty spectacle. Behold in mortal life that infant near the sacred fountain ; a family filled with thank- fulness surround it ; renounce in its name the sins of the world ; bestow on it with joy the name of its grandfather, which seems thus to become immortal, in its perpetual renovation by the fruits of love from generation to generation. Even now the father is impatient to take his infant in his arms, to replace it in its mothers bosom, who listens behind the curtains to all the thrilling sounds of the sacred ceremony. The whole family surround the maternal bed ; tears of joy, mingled with the transports of religion, fall from every eye ; the new name of the infant, the old name of its ancestor, is repeated by every mouth, and every one mingling the recollections of the past with the joys of the present, thinks that he sees the venerable grand- father revive in the new-bom which has taken his name. Such is the domestic spectacle which throughout all the Christian world the sacrament of Baptism presents ; but religion, ever mingling lessons of duty with scenes of joy, shows us the son of kings clothed in purple, renouncing the grandeur of the world, at the same fountain where tlie child of the poor in rags abjures the pomps by which he will in all probability never be tempted. "• Confession follows baptism ; and the Church, with that wisdom which it alone possesses, fixed the era of its commencement at that period when first the idea of crime can enter the infant mind — that is, at seven years of age. All men, including the philosophers, how diff'erent soever their opinions may be on other subjects, have regarded the sacrament of penitence as one of the strongest barriers against crime, and a chef-d'oeuvre of wisdom. What innumerable restitutions and reparations, says Rousseau, has con- 16 CHATEAUBRIAND. fession caused to be made in Catholic countries ! According to Voltaire, ' Confession is an admirable invention, a bridle to crime, discovered in the most remote antiquitv, for confession was recognised in the celebration of all the ancient mysteries. We have adopted and sanctified that wise cus- tom, and its effects have always been found to be admirable in inclining hearts, ulcerated by hatred, to forgiveness.' " But for that salutary institution, the guilty would give way to despair. In what bosom would he discharge the weight of his heart ? In that of a friend — Who can trust the friendship of the world? Shall he take the deserts for a confident ? Alas ! the deserts are ever filled to the ear of crime with those trumpets which the parricide Nero heard round the tomb of his mother. When men and nature are unpitiable, it is indeed consolatory to find a Deity inclined to pardon ; but it belongs only to the Christian religion to have made twin sisters of Innocence and Repentance. " In fine, the Communion presents instructive ceremony. It teaches morality, for we must be pure to approach it ; it is the offering of the fruits of the earth to the Creator, aud it recalls the sublime and touching history of the Son of Man. Blended with the recollection of Easter, and of the first covenant of God with man, the origin of the communion is lost in the obscurity of an infant world ; it is related to our first ideas of religion and society, and recalls the pristine equality of the human race; in fine, it per- petuates the recollection of our primeval fall, of our redemption, and reacceptance by God." — Vol. i. 30-46. These and similar passages, not merely in this work, \rhich professes to be of a popular cast, but in others of the highest class of Catholic divinity, suggest an idea which, the more we extend our reading, the more we shall find to be just — viz., that in the greater and purer writers on religion, of whatever church or age, the leading doctrines are nearly the same, and that the differences which divide their fol- lowers, and distract the world, are seldom, on any material or important points, to be met with in writers of a superior caste. Chateaubriand is a faithful, and in some respects, perhaps, a bigoted Catholic ; yet there is hardly a word here, or in any other part of his writings on religion, to which a Christian in any country may not subscribe, and which is not calculated in all ages and places to forward the great work of the purification and improvement of the human heart. Travellers have often observed that in a certain rank in all countries manuers are the same ; naturalists know that at a certain elevation above the sea in all latitudes we meet with the same vegetable productions ; and philosophers have often remarked, that, in the highest class of intellects, opinions on almost every subject in all ages and places are the same. A similar uniformity may be observed in the principles of the greatest writers of the world on I'eligion ; and while the inferior followers of their different tenets CHATEAUBRIAND. 17 branch out into endless divisions, and indulge in sectarian rancour, in the more lofty regions of intellect the principles are substantially the same, and the objects of all identical. So small a proportion do all the disputed points in theology bear to the great objects of religion — ^love to God, charity to man, and the subjugation of human passion. On the subject of marriage, and the reasons for its indis- solubility, our author presents us with the following beautiful observations : — " Habit and a long life together are more necessary to happiness, and even to love, than is generally imagined. No one is happy with the object of his attachment nntil he has passed many days, and above all, many days of misfortune, with her. The married pair must know each other to the bottom of their souls ; the mysterious veil which covered the two spouses in the primitive church must be raised in its inmost folds, how closely soever it may be kept drawn to the rest of the world. " What ! on account of a fit of caprice, or a burst of passion, am I to be exposed to the fear of losing my wife and my children, and to renounce the hope of passing my declining days with them? Let no one imagine that fear will make me become a better husband. No ; we do not attach our- selves to a possession of which we are not secure, we do not love a property which we are in danger of losing. "We must not give to Hymen the wings of Love, nor make of a sacred reality a fleeting phantom. One thing is alone sufficient to destroy your happiness in such transient unions ; you will constantly compare one to the other, the wife you have lost to the one you have gained ; and, do not deceive yourself, the balance will always incline to the past, for so God has con- structed the human heart. This distraction of a sentiment w^hich should be indivisible will empoison all your joys. When you caress your new infant, you will think of the smiles of the one you have lost ; when you press your wife to your bosom, your heart will tell you that she is not the first. Every- thing in man tends to unity ; he is no longer happy when he is divided, and, like God, who made him in His image, his soul seeks incessantly to concen- trate into one point the past, the present, and the future. " The wife of a Christian is not a simple mortal : she is a mysterious angelic being : the flesh of the flesh, the blood of the blood of her husband. Man, in uniting himself to her, does nothing but regain part of the substance which he has lost. His soul as well as his body are incomplete without his wife : he has strength, she has beauty ; he combats the enemy and labours the fields, but he understands nothing of domestic life ; his companion is awanting to prepare his repast and sweeten his existence. He has his crosses, and the partner of his couch is there to soften them : his days may be sad and troubled, but in the chaste arms of his wife he finds comfort and repose. Without woman man would be rade, gross, and solitary. Woman spreads around him the flowers of existence, as the creepers of the forests which decorate the trunks of sturdy oaks with then- perfumed garlands, Finally, the Christian pair live and die united : together they rear the fruits of their union ; in the dust they lie side by side ; and they are reunited beyond the limits of the tomb." — Vol. i. 78, 79. The extreme unction of the Catholic Church is described in these touching words : — VOL. HL B 18 CHATEAUBEIAND. " Come and behold the most moving spectacle which the world can exhibit— the death of the faithful. The dying Christian is no longer a man of this world ; he belongs no farther to his country ; all his relations with society have ceased. For him the calculations of time are closed, and the great era of eternity has commenced. A priest seated beside his bed pours the consolations of religion into his dying ear : the holy minister converses with the expiring penitent on the immortality of the soul ; and that sublime scene which antiquity presented but once in the death of the greatest of her philosophers, is renewed every day at the couch where the humblest Christian expires. '' At length the supreme moment arrives : one sacrament has opened the gates of the world, another is about to close them ; religion rocked the cradle of existence ; its sweet strains and its maternal hand will lull it to sleep in the arms of death. It prepares the baptism of a second existence ; but it is no longer with water, but oil, the emblem of celestial incorniption. The liberating sacrament dissolves, one by one, the chords which attach the faithful to this world : the soul, half escaped from its earthly prison, is almost visible to the senses, in the smile which plays around his lips. Already he hears the music of the seraphim ; already he longs to fly to those regions, where hope divine, daughter of virtue and death, beckons him to approach. At length the angel of peace, descending from the heavens, touches with his golden sceptre his wearied eyelids, and closes them in delicious repose to the light. He dies ; and so sweet has been his departure, that no one has heard his last sigh ; and his friends, long after he is no more, preserve silence round his couch, still thinking that he slept : so like the sleep of infancy is the death of the just." — Yol. i. 69, 71. It is against pride, as every one knows, that the chief efforts of the Catholic Church have always been directed, because they consider it as the source of all other crime. Whether this is a just view may, perhaps, be doubted, to the extent at least to which they carry it ; but there can be but one opinion as to the eloquence of the apology which Chateaubriand makes for this selection. " In the virtues preferred by Christianity, we perceive the same know- ledge of human nature. Before the coming of Christ, the soul of man was a chaos ; but no sooner was the Word heard, than all the elements arranged themselves in the moral world, as, at the same divine inspiration they had produced the marvels of material creation. The virtues ascended like pure fires into the heavens ; some, like brilliant suns, attracted the regards by their resplendent light ; others, more modest, sought the shade, where never- theless their lustre could not be concealed. From that moment an admirable balance was established between the forces and the weaknesses of existence. Religion directed its thunders against pride, the vice which is nourished by the virtues; it discovers it in the inmost recesses of the heart, and follows it out in all its metamorphoses ; the sacraments in a holy legion march against it, while humility, clothed in sackcloth and ashes, its eyes downcast and bathed in tears, becomes one of the chief virtues of the faithful." — Vol. i. 74. On the tendency of all the fables concerning creation to remount to one general and eternal truth, our author pre- sents the following reflections : — CHATEAUBRIAND. 19 "After this exposition of the dreams of philosophy, it may seem useless to speak of the fancy of the poets. Who does not know Deucalion and Pyrrha, the age of gold and of iron ? What innumerable traditions are scattered through the earth ! In India, an elephant sustains the globe ; the sun in Peru has brought forth all the marvels of existence ; in Canada, the Great Spirit is the father of the world ; in Greenland, man has emerged from an egg ; in fine, Scandinavia has beheld the birth of Askur and Emla ; Odin has poured in the breath of life, Hcenerus reason, and Loedur blood and beauty. ' Askum et Emlam omni conalu destitutes Animam nee possidebant, rationem nee habebant Xec sanguinem, nee sermouem, nee faciem venustam. Animam dedit Odinus. rationem dedit Hcenerus, Loedur sanguinem addidit et faciem venustam.' " In these various traditions, we find ourselves placed between the stories of children and the abstractions of philosophers ; if we were obliged to choose, it were better to take the first. " But to discover the original of the picture in the midst of so many copies, we must recur to that which, by its unity and the perfection of its parts, unfolds the genius of a master. It is that which we find in Genesis, the original of all those pictures which we see reproduced in so many diff'erent traditions. What can be at once more natural and more magnifi- cent — more easy to conceive, and more in unison with human reason, than the Creator descending amidst the night of ages to create light by a word ? In an instant, the sun is seen suspended in the heavens, in the midst of an immense azure vault ; with invisible bonds he envelops the planets, and whirls them round his burning axle ; the sea and the forests appear on the globe, and their earliest voices arise to annoimce to the universe that great marriage, of which God is the priest, the earth the nuptial couch, and the human race the posterity." — Vol. i. 97, 98. On the appearance of age on the globe, and its first aspect when fresh from the hands of the Creator, the author presents an hypothesis more in unison with the imagination of a poet than the observations of a philosopher, on the gradual formation of all objects destined for a long endurance. He supposes that everything was at once created as we now see it. "It is probable that the Author of nature planted at once aged forests and their youthful progeny ; that animals arose at the same time, some full of years, others buoyant with the vigour and adorned with the grace of youth. The oaks, while they pierced with their roots the fruitful earth, without doubt bore at once the old nests of rooks, and the young progeny of doves. At once grew a chrysalis and a butterfly ; the insect bounded on the grass, suspended its golden egg in the forests, or trembled in the undula- tions of the air. The bee, which had not yet lived a morning, already counted the generations of flowers by its ambrosia — the sheep was not with- out its lamb, the doe without its fawns. The thicket already contained the nightingales, astonished at the melody of their first airs, as they pom'ed forth the new-born efi'usion of their infant loves. " Had the world not arisen at once young and old, the grand, the serious, the impressive would have disappeared fi'om nature ; for all these senti- ments depend for their very essence on ancient things. The marvels of 20 CHATEAUBRIAND. existence would have been unknown. The rumed rock would not have hung over the abvss beneath ; the woods would not have exhibited that splendid variety of trunks bending under the weight of years, of trees hanging over the bed of streams. The inspired thoughts, the venerated sounds, the magic voices, the sacred horror of the forests, would have vanished with the vaults which serve for their retreats ; and the solitudes of earth and heaven would have remained naked and disenchanted in losing the columns of oaks which united them. On the first day when the ocean dashed against the shore, he bathed, be assured, sands bearing all the marks of the action of his waves for ages ; cliffs strewed with the eggs of innumerable sea-fowl, and rugged capes which sustained against the waters the crum- bling shores of the earth. " Without that primeval age, there would have been neither pomp nor majesty in the work of the Most High ; and, contrary to all our conceptions, nature in the innocence of man would have been less beautiful than it is now in the davs of his corruption. An insipid childhood of plants, of animals, of elements," would have covered the earth, without the poetical feelings which now constitute its principal charm. But God was not so feeble a designer of the grove of Eden as the incredulous would lead us to believe. Man, the sovereign of nature, Avas born at thirty years of age, in order that his powers should correspond with the full-grown magnificence of his new empire, — while his consort, doubtless, had already passed her sixteenth spring, though yet in the slumber of nonentity, that she might be in harmony with the flowers, the birds, the innocence, the love, the beauty of the youthful part of the universe." — Vol. i. 137, 138. In the rhythm of prose, these are the colours of poetry ; but still this was not to all appearance the order of crea- tion. And here, as in many other instances, it will be found that the deductions of experience present conclusions more sublime than the most fervid imagination has been able to conceive. Everything announces that the great works of nature are carried on by slow and insensible gi'adations ; continents, the abode of millions, are formed by the conflu- ence of innumerable rills ; vegetation, commencing with the lichen and the moss, rises at length into the riches and magnificence of the forest. Patient analysis, philosophical discovery, have now taught us that it was by the same slow progress that the great work of creation was accomphshed. The fossil remains of antediluvian ages have laid open the primeval works of nature ; the long period which elapsed before the creation of man, the vegetables which then covered the earth, the animals which sported amidst its watery wastes, the life which first succeeded to chaos, all stand revealed. To the astonishment of mankind, the order of creation, unfolded in Genesis, is proved by the contents of the earth beneath every part of its surface to be precisely that which has actually been followed ; the days of the Creator's workmanship turn out to be the days of the CHATEAUBRIAXD. 21 Most Iligli, not of His uncreated subjects, and to correspond to ages of our epliemeral existence ; and the great sabbath of the earth took place, not, as we imagined, when the sixth sun had set after the first morning had beamed, but when the sixth period had expired, devoted bj Omnipotence to the mighty undertaking. God then rested from his labours, because the great changes of matter, and the successive production and annihilation of different kinds of animated existence, ceased ; creation assumed a settled form, and laws came into operation destined for indefinite endurance. Chateaubriand said truly, that to man, when he first opened his eyes on paradise, nature appeared with all the majesty of age as well as all the freshness of youth ; but it was not in a week, but during a series of ages, that the magnificent spectacle had been assembled ; and for the undying delight of his progeny, in all future years, the powers of nature for countless time had been already exerted. The fifth book of the Genie dii Christianisme treats of the proofs of the existence of God, derived from the wonders of material nature ; in other words, of the splendid subject of natural theology. On such a subject, the obser- vations of a mind so stored with knowledge, and gifted with such powers of eloquence, may be expected to be something of extraordinary excellence. Though the part of his work, accordingly, which treats of this subject, is necessarily circumscribed, from the multitude of others with which it is overwhelmed, it is of surpassing beauty, and superior in point of description to anything which has been produced on the same subject by the genius of Britain. " There is a God ! The herbs of the valley, the cedars of the mountain, bless Him— the insect sports in His beams — the elephant salutes Him with the rising orb of the day — the bird sings Him in the foliage — the thunder proclaims Him in the heavens — the ocean declares His immensity — man alone has said, ' There is no God !' " Unite in thought, at the same instant, the most beautiful objects in nature ; suppose that you see at once all the hours of the day, and all the seasons of the year ; a morning of spring and a morning of autumn ; a night bespangled with stars, and a night covered with clouds ; meadows enamelled with flowers, forests hoary with snow ; fields gilded by the tints of autumn ; then alone you will have a just conception of the universe. While you are gazing on that sun which is plunging under the vault of the west, another observer admires him emerging from the gilded gates of the East. By what 22 CHATEAUBRIAND. unconceivable magic does that aged star, ^^'hicll is sinking fatigued and burning in the shades of the evening, reappear at the same instant fresh and humid with the rosy dew of the morning? At every instant of the day the glorious orb is at once rising — resplendent at noonday, and setting in the west ; or rather our senses deceive us, and there is, properly speaking, no east, or south, or west in the world. Everything reduces itself to one single point, from whence the King of Day sends forth at once a triple light in one single substance. The bright splendour is perhaps that which nature can present that is most beautiful ; for while it gives us an idea of the perpetual magnificence and resistless power of God, it exhibits, at the same time, a shining image of the glorious Trinity." The instincts of animals, and their adaptation to the wants of their existence, have long furnished one of the most interesting subjects of study to the naturalist, and of medi- tation to the devout observer of creation. Chateaubriand has painted, with his usual descriptive powers, one of the most familiar of these examples — " What ingenious springs move the feet of a bird? It is not by a con- traction of muscles dependent on his will that he maintains himself firm upon a branch ; his foot is constructed in such a way that when it is pressed in the centre, the toes close of their own accord upon the body which sup- ports it. It results from this mechanism, that the talons of the bird grasp more or less firmly the object on which it has alighted, in proportion to the agitation, more or less violent, which it has received. Thus, w^hen we see at the approach of night, during winter, the crows perched on the scathed summit of an aged oak, we suppose that, watchful and attentive, they main- tain their place with pain during the rocking of the winds ; and yet, heedless of danger, and mocking the tempest, the winds oul}^ bring them profouuder slumber. The blasts of the north attach them more firmly to the branch, from whence we every instant expect to see them precipitated ; and like the old seaman, whose hammock is suspended to the roof of his vessel, the more he is tossed by the winds, the more profound is his repose." — Vol. i. 147, 148. " Amidst the different instincts which the Sovereign of the universe has implanted in natm'e, one of the most wonderful is that which every year brings the fish of the Pole to our temperate region. They come, without once mistaking their way, through the solitude of the ocean, to reach, on a fixed day, the stream where their hymen is to be celebrated. The spring ])repares on our shores their nuptial pomp ; it covers the billows with ver- dure, it spreads beds of moss in the waves to serve for curtains to its crystal couciies. Hardly are these preparations completed when the enamelled legions appear ; the animated navigators enliven our coasts ; some spring aloft from the surface of the waters, others balance themselves on the waves, or diverge from a common centre like innumerable flashes of gold ; these dart obliquely their shining bodies athwart the azure fluid, while others sleep in the rays of the sun, which penetrates beneath the dancing surface of the waves. All, sporting in the joys of existence, meander, return, wheel about, dash across, form in squadron, separate, and reunite ; and the inhabitant of the seas, inspired by a breath of existence, pursues with bounding move- ments its mate, by the line of fire which is reflected from her in the stream." —Vol. i. 152, 153. Chateaubriand's mind is full not only of the images, but the sounds, which attest the reimi of animated nature. CHATEAUBEIAI^D. 23 Equally familiar with those of the desert and of the culti- vated plain, he has had his susceptibility alike open in both to the impressions whicli arise to a pious observer from their contemplation. " There is a law in nature relative to the cries of animals, which has not been suflScientl}^ observed, and deserves to be so. The different sounds of the inhabitants of the desert are calculated according to the grandeur or the sweetness of the scene where they arise, and the hour of the day when they are heard. The roaring of the lion, loud, rough, and tremendous, is in unison with the desert scenes in which it is heard ; while the lowing of the oxen diffuses a pleasing calm through our valleys. The goat has something trembling and savage in its cry, like the rocks and ravines from which it loves to suspend itself. The war-horse imitates the notes of the trumpet that animates him to the charge, and, as if he felt that he was not made for degrading employments, he is silent under the spur of the labourer, and neighs under the rein of the warrior. The night, by turns charming or sombre, is enlivened by the nightingale or saddened by the owl ; the one sings for the zephyrs, the groves, the moon, the soul of lovers — the other for the winds, the forests, the darkness, and the dead. Finally, all the animals which live on others have a peculiar cry by which they may be distinguished by the creatures which are destined to be their prey." — Vol. i. 156. The making of birds' nests is one of the most common objects of observation. Listen to the reflections of genius and poetry on this beautiful subject. " The admirable wisdom of Providence is nowhere more conspicuous than in the nests of birds. It is impossible to contemplate, without emotion, the Divine goodness, which thus gives industry to the weak and foresight to the thoughtless. " No sooner have the trees put forth their leaves, than a thousand little workmen commence their labours. Some bring long pieces of straw into the hole of an old wall, others affix their edifice to the windows of a church ; these steal a hair from the mane of a horse ; those bear away, with wings trembling beneath its weight, the fragment of wool which a lamb has left entangled in the briers. A thousand palaces at once arise, and every palace is a nest : within every nest is soon to be seen a charming metamorphosis ; first, a beautiful egg^ then a little one covered with down. The little nest- ling soon feels his wings begin to grow ; his mother teaches him to raise himself on his bed of repose. Soon he takes courage enough to approach the edge of the nest, and casts a first look on the works of nature. Terrified and enchanted at the sight, he precipitates himself amidst his brothers and sisters, who have never as yet seen that spectacle ; but, recalled a second time from his couch, the young king of the air, who still has the crown of infancy on his head, ventures to contemplate the boundless heavens, the waving summit of the pine-trees, and the vast labyrinth of foliage i;\'hich lies beneath his feet. And, at the moment that the forests are rejoicing at the sight of their new inmate, an aged bird, who feels himself abandoned by his wings, quietly rests beside a stream : there, resigned and solitary, he tranquilly awaits death, on the banks of the same river where he sang his first loves, and whose trees still bear his nest and his melodious offspring." — Vol. i. 158. The subject of the migration of the feathered tribes fur- 24 CHATEAUBRIAND. nishes this attentive observer of nature with many beautiful images. We have room only for the following extract : — " In the first ages of the world, it was by the flowering of plants, the fall of the leaves, the departure and the arrival of birds, that the labourers and the shepherds regulated their labours. Thence has sprung the art of divi- nation among certain people : they imagined that the birds which were sure to precede certain changes of the season or atmosphere, could not but be inspired by the Deity. The ancient naturalists, and the poets, to whom we are indebted for the few remains of simplicity which still linger amongst us, show us how marvellous was that manner of counting by the changes of nature, and what a charm it spread over the whole of existence. God is a profound secret. Man, created in his image, is equally incomprehensible. It was, therefore, an inefi'able harmony to see the periods of his existence regulated by measures of time as harmonious as himself. " Beneath the tents of Jacob or of Boaz, the arrival of a bird put every- thing in movement ; the Patriarch made the circuit of the camp at the head of his followers, armed with scythes. If the report was spread that the young of the swallows had been seen wheeling about, the whole people joy- fidly commenced their harvest. These beautiful signs, while they du-ected the labours of the present, had the advantage of foretelling the vicissitudes of the approaching season. If the geese and swans arrived in abundance, it Avas known that the winter would be severe ; did the redbreast begin to build its nest in January, the shepherds hoped in April for the roses of May. The man'iage of a virgin on the margin of a fountain was represented by the first opening of the bud of the rose ; and the death of the aged, who usually drop oft' in autumn, by the falKng of leaves, or the maturity of the harvests. While the philosopher, abridging or elongating the year, extended the win- ter over the verdure of spring, the peasant felt no alarm that the astronomer, who came to him from heaven, would be wrong in his calculations. He knew that the nightingale would not take the season of hoarfrost for that of flowers, or make the groves resound at the winter solstice with the songs of summer. Thus the cares, the joys, the pleasures, of the rural life were determined, not by the uncertain calendar of the learned, but by the infallible signs of Him who traced his path to the sun. That sovereign Regulator wished Himself that the rites of His worship should be determined by the epochs fixed by His works ; and in those days of innocence, according to the seasons and the labours they required, it was the voice of the zephyr or the tempest, of the eagle or the dove, which called the worshipper to the temple of his Creator." — Vol. i. 171. Let no one exclaim, What have these descriptions to do with the spirit of Christianity 1 Gray thought otherwise when he wrote the sublime lines on visiting the Grande Chartreuse ; Buchanan thought otherwise, when, in his exquisite Ode to May, he supposed the first zephyrs of spring to blow over the Islands of the Just. The work of Chateaubriand, it is to be recollected, is not merely an exposition of the doctrines, spirit, or precepts of Christianity ; it is intended expressly to allure, by the charms which it exhibits, the man of the world, an unbelieving and volatile generation, to the feelings of devotion ; it is meant to com- bine all that is delightful or lovely in the works of nature, CHATEAUBRIAND. 25 with all tliat is sublime or elevating in the revelations of religion. In his eloquent pages, therefore, we find united the Natural Theology of Palej, the Contemplations of Taylor, and the Analogy of Butler; and if the theologians will look in vain for the weighty arguments by which the English divines have established the foundation of their faith, men of ordinary education will find even more to entrance and subdue their minds. Among tlie proofs of the immortality of the soul, our author, with all others who have thought upon the subject, classes the obvious disproportion between the desires and capacity of the soul, and the limits of its acquisitions and enjoyments in this world. In the following passage, this argument is placed in its just colours: — " If it is impossible to deny that the hope of man continues to the edge of the grave ; if it be true that the advantages of this world, so far from satisfying our wishes, tend only to augment the want which the soul expe- riences, and dig deeper the abyss which it contains within itself, we must conclude that there is something beyond the limits of time. ' Vincula hujus mundi,' says St Augustin, 'asperitatem habent veram, jucunditatem falsam, certum dolorem, incertam voluptatem, durum laborem, timidam quietem, rem plenam miseria?, spem beatitudinis inanera.' Far from lamenting that the desu'e for felicity has been planted in this world, and its ultimate gratification only in another, let us discern in that only an additional proof of the goodness of God. Since sooner or later we must quit this world, Providence has placed beyond its limits a charm, which is felt as an attrac- tion to diminish the terrors of the tomb ; as a kind mother, when wishing to make her infant cross a barrier, places some agreeable object on the other side."— Vol. i. 210. " Finally, there is another proof of the immortality of the sod, which has not been sufficiently insisted on, and that is the universal veneration of mankind for the tomb. There, by an invincible charm, life is attached to death ; there the human race declares itself superior to the rest of crea- tion, and proclaims aloud its lofty destinies. What animal regards its coffin, or disquiets itself about the ashes of its fathers ? Which one has any regard for the bones of its father, or even knows its father, after the first necessities of infancy are passed? Whence comes, then, the all- powerful idea which we entertain of death ? Do a few grains of dust merit so much consideration ? No ; without doubt we respect the bones of our fathers, because an inward voice tells us that all is not lost with them ; and that is the voice which has everywhere consecrated the funeral service throughout the world ; all are equally persuaded that the sleep is not eternal, even in the tomb, and that death itself is but a glorious transfigura- tion."— Vol. i. 217. To the objection, that if the idea of God is innate, it must appear in children without any education, which is not generally the case, Chateaubriand replies : — " God being a spirit, and it being impossible that he should be under- stood but by a spirit, an infant, in whom the powers of thought are not as 26 CHATEAUBRIAND. yet developed, cannot form a proper conception of the Supreme Being. "We must not expect from the heart its noblest function, when the marvellous fabric is as yet in the hands of its Creator. " Besides", there seems reason to believe that a child has at least a sort of instinct of its Creator ; witness only its little reveries, its disquietudes, its fears in the night, its disposition to raise its eyes to heaven. An infant joins together its little hands, and repeats after its mother a prayer to the good God. Why does that little angel lisp with so much love and purity the name of the Supreme Being, if it has no inward consciousness of His existence in its heart ? " Behold that new-born infant, which the nurse still carries in her arms. What has it done to give so much joy to that old man, to that man in the prime of life, to that woman? Two or three syllables half- formed, which no one rightly understands, and instantly three reasonable creatures are transported with delight, from the gi-andfather, to whom all that life contains is known, to the young mother, to whom the greater part of it is as yet unrevealed. Who has put that power into the word of man? How does it happen that the sound of a human voice subjugates so instantane- ously the human heart ? What subjugates you is something allied to a mystery, which depends on causes more elevated than the interest, how strong soever, which you take in that infant ; something tells you that these inarticulate words are the first openings of an immortal soul." — Vol. i. 224:. There is a subject on which human genius can hardly dare to touch, — the future felicity of the just. Our author thus treats this delicate subject : — " The purest of sentiments in this world is admiration ; but every earthly admiration is mingled with weakness, either in the object it admires or in that admiring. Imagine, then, a perfect being, which perceives at once all that is, and has, and will be ; suppose that soul exempt from envy and all the weaknesses of life, incorruptible, indefatigable, unalterable ; conceive it contemplating, without ceasing, the Most High, discovering incessantly new perfections ; feeling existence only from the renewed sentiment of that admiration ; conceive God as the sovereign beauty, the universal principle of love ; figure all the attachments of earth blending in that abyss of feel- ing, without ceasing to love the objects of afiection on this earth ; imagine, finally, that the inmate of heaven has the conviction that this felicity is never to end, and you will have an idea, feeble and imperfect indeed, of the felicity of the just. They are plunged in this abyss of delight, as in an ocean from which they cannot emerge : they wish nothing ; they have everything, though desiring nothing — an eternal youth, a felicity without end ; a glory divine is expressed in their countenances ; a sweet, noble, and majestic joy; it is a sublime feeling of truth and virtue which transports them; at everj- instant they experience the same rapture as a mother who regains a beloved child whom she believed lost ; and that exquisite joy, too fleeting on earth, is there prolonged through the ages of eternity." — Vol. i. 241. We intended to have gone througli, in this paper, the whole Genie du Christianisme, and we have only concluded the first volume, so prolific of beauty are its pages. We make no apology for the length of the quotations, which have so much extended the limits of this article ; any observations would be inexcusable which should abridge passages of such transcendent beauty. CHATEAUBEIAND. 27 The Itineraire de Paris a Jerusalem is an account of the author's journey in 1806, from Paris to Greece, Constan- tinople, Palestine, Egypt, and Carthage. Tliis work is not so much a book of travels, as memoirs of the feelings and impressions of the author during a journey over the shores of the Mediterranean ; the cradle, as Dr Johnson observed, of all that dignifies and has blest human nature, of our laws, our religion, and our civilisation. It may readily be antici- pated that the observations of such a man, in such scenes, must contain much that is interesting and delightful : our readers may prepare themselves for a high gratification ; it is seldom that they have such an intellectual feast laid before them. We have translated the passages, both because there is no English version with which we are acquainted of this work, and because the translations which usually appear of French authors are executed in so slovenly a style. On his first night amidst the ruins of Sparta, our author gives the following interesting account : — " After supper Joseph brought me my saddle, which usually serves for my pillow. I wrapped myself in my cloak, and slept on the banks of the Eurotas under a laurel. The night was so clear and serene, that the Milky Way formed a resplendent arch, reflected in the waters of the river, and by the light of which I could read. I slept with my eyes turned towards the heavens, and with the constellation of the Swan of Leda directly above my head. Even at this distance of time I recollect the pleasure I experienced in sleeping thus in the woods of America, and still more in awakening in the middle of the night. I there heard the sound of the wind rustling through those profound solitudes, the cry of the stag and the deer, the fall of a distant cataract ; while the fire at my feet, half-extinguished, reddened from below the foliage of the forest. I even experienced a pleasure from the voice of the Iroquois, when he uttered his cry in the midst of the untrodden woods, and by tlie light of the stars, amidst the silence of nature, proclaimed his unfettered freedom. Emotions such as these please at twenty years of age, because life is then so full of vigour that it suffices, as it were, for itself; and because there is something in early youth which incessantly urges towards the mysterious and the unknown ; ipsi sihi somniafingunt ; but in a more mature age the mind reverts to more imperishable emotions ; it inclines, most of all, to the recollections and the examples of history. I would still sleep willingly on the banks of the Eurotas and the Jordan, if the shades of the three hundred Spartans, or of the twelve sons of Jacob, were to visit my dreams ; but I would no longer set out to visit lands which have never been explored by the plough. I now feel the desire for those old deserts which shroud the walls of Babylon or the legions of Pharsalia ; fields of which the furrows are engraven on human thought, and where I may find man as I am, the blood, the tears, and the labours of man."— Vol. i. 86, 87. From Laconia our author directed his steps by the 28 CHATEAUBRIAND. isthmus of Corinth to Athens. Of his first feehngs in the ancient cradle of taste and genius, he gives the following beautiful description : — " Overwhelmed with fatigue, I slept for some time without interruption, when I was at length awakened by the sound of Turkish music, proceeding from the summits of the Propyleum. At the same moment a Mussulman priest from one of the mosques called the faithful to pray in the city of Minerva. I cannot describe what I felt at the sound ; that Iman had no need to remind one of the lapse of time ; his voice alone in these scenes announced the revolution of ages. " This fluctuation in human affairs is the more remarkable from the con- trast which it affords to the unchangeableness of nature. As if to insult the instability of human afiau's, the animals and the birds experience no change in their empires, nor alterations in their habits. I saw^, when sitting on the hill of the Muses, the storks form themselves into a w^edge, and wing their flight towards the shores of Africa. For two thousand years they have made the same voyage — they have remained free and happy in the city of Solon, as in that of the chief of the black eunuchs. From the height of their nests, which the revolutions below have not been able to reach, they have seen the races of men disappear ; while impious generations have arisen on the tombs of their religious parents, the young stork has never ceased to nourish its aged parent. I involuntarily fell into these reflections, for the stork is the friend of the traveller : ' it knows the seasons of heaven.' These birds were frequently my companions in the solitudes of America ; I have often seen them perched on the wigwams of the savage ; and when I saw them rise from another species of desert, from the ruins of the Parthenon, I could not avoid recognising a companion in the desolation of empires. " The first thing which strikes a traveller in the monuments of Athens is their lovely colour. In our climate, w^here the heavens are charged with smoke and rain, the whitest stone soon becomes tinged with black and gi'een. It is not thus with the atmosphere of the city of Theseus. The clear sky and brilliant sun of Greece have shed over the marble of Pares and Pentelicus a golden hue, comparable only to the finest and most fleeting tints of autumn. " Before I saw these splendid remains, I had fallen into the ordinary error concerning them. I conceived they were perfect in their details, but that they wanted grandeur. But the first glance at the originals is sufficient to show that the genius of the architects has supplied, in the mag- nitude of proportion, what was wanting in size ; and Athens is accordingly filled with stupendous edifices. The Athenians, a people far from rich, few in number, have succeeded in moving gigantic masses ; the blocks of stone in the Pnyx and the Propyleum are literally quarters of rock. The slabs which stretch from pillar to pillar are of enormous dimensions : the columns of the Temple of Jupiter Olympius are above sixty feet in height, and the walls of Athens, including those which stretched to the Piniius, extended over nine leagues, and were so broad that two chariots could drive on them abreast. The Romans never erected more extensive fortifications. "By what strange fatality has it happened that the chefs d'ociwre of antiquity, which the moderns go so far to admire, have owed their destruc- tion chiefly to the moderns themselves? The Parthenon was entire in 1687 ; the Christians at first converted it into a church, and the Turks into a mosque. The Venetians, in the middle of the light of the seventeenth century, bombarded the Acropolis with red-hot shot ; a sheU fell on the Parthenon, pierced the roof, communicated to a few barrels of powder, and blew into the an- great part of the edifice, which did less honour to the gods CHATEAUBRIAND. 29 of antiquity than the genius of man. No sooner was the town captured, than Morosini, in the design of embellishing Venice with its spoils, took down the statues from the front of the Temple ; and another modern has completed, from love for the arts, that which the Venetian had begun. The invention of firearms has been fatal to the monuments of antiquity. Had the barbarians been acquainted with the use of gunpowder, not a Greek or Roman edifice would have survived their invasion ; they would have blown up even the Pyramids in the search for hidden treasures. One year of war in our times will destroy more than a century of combats among the ancients. Everything among the moderns seems opposed to the perfection of art ; their countrv, their manners, their dress, even their discoveries." — Vol. i. 136, 145. These observations are perfectly well founded. No one can have visited the monuments of the Greeks on the shores of the Mediterranean, without perceiving that thej were thoroughly masters of an element of grandeur hitlierto but little understood among the moderns — that arising from gigantic masses of stone. The feeling of sublimity which they produce is indescribable ; it equals that of Gothic edifices of a thousand times the size. Every traveller must have felt this upon looking at the immense masses which rise in solitary magnificence on the plains at Stonehenge. The great block in the tomb of Agamemnon at Argos ; those in the Cyclopean Walls of Volterra, and in the ruins of Agrigentum in Sicily, strike the beholder with a degree of astonishment bordering on awe. To have moved such enormous masses seems the work of a race of mortals superior in thought and power to this degenerate age ; it is impossible, in visiting them, to avoid the feeling that you are beholding the work of giants. It is to this cause, we are persuaded, that the extraordinary impression produced by the Pyramids, and all the works of the Cyclopean age in architecture, is to be ascribed ; and as it is an element of sublimity within the reach of all who have considerable funds at their command, it is earnestly to be hoped that it will not be overlooked by our architects. Strange that so power- ful an ingredient in the sublime should have been lost sight of in proportion to the ability of the age to produce it, and that the monuments raised in the infancy of the mechanical art, should still be those in which alone it is to be seen to perfection ! We willingly translate the description of the unrivalled Bcene viewed from the Acropolis by the same poetical hand ; a description so glowing, and yet so true, that it almost 30 CHATEAUBRIAXD. recalls, after the lapse of years, the fading tints of the original on the memory. " To understand the view from the Acropolis, you must figure to yourself all the plain at its foot ; bare and clothed in a dusky heath, intersected here and there by woods of olives, squares of barley, and ridges of vines ; you must conceive the heads of columns, and the ends of ancient ruins, emerging from the midst of that cultivation ; Albanian women washing their clothes at the fountain or the scanty streams ; peasants leading their asses, laden with provisions, into the ^modern city : those ruins so celebrated, those isles, those seas, whose names are engraven on the memory, illumined by a resplendent light, I have seen from the rock of the Acropolis the sun rise between the two summits of Mount Hymettus : the ravens, which nestle round the citadel, but never fly over its summit, floating in the air beneath, their glossy wings reflecting the rosy tints of the morning : columns of light smoke ascending from the villages on the sides of the neighbouring moun- tains marked the colonies of bees on the far-famed Hymettus ; and the ruins of the Parthenon were illuminated by the finest tints of pink and violet. The sculptures of Phidias, struck by a horizontal ray of gold, seemed to start from their marble bed by the depth and mobility of their shadows : in the distance, the sea and the Piraus were resplendent with light, while on the verge of the western horizon, the citadel of Corinth, glittering in the rays of the rising sun, shone like a rock of purple and fire." — Vol. i. 149. These are the colours of poetry ; but beside this brilliant passage of French description, we willingly place the equally correct and still more thrilling lines of our own poet. " Slow sinks, more beauteous ere his race be inin. Along Morea's hills the setting sun, Xot as in northern clime obscurely bright. But one rmclouded blaze of living light; O'er the hushed deep the yellow beams he throws. Gilds the green wave that trembles as it glows ; On old ^Egina's rock and Idra's isle, The God of Gladness sheds his parting smile ; O'er his own regions lingeiing loves to shine, Though there his altars are no more divine ; Descending fast, the mountain shadows kiss Thy glorious gulf, vmconquer'd Salamis ! Their azure arches through the long expanse, More deeply pui'pled meet his mellowing glance, And tenderest tints, along their summits driven, Mark his gay com-se and o^vu the hues of heaven, Till, darkly shaded from the land and deep, Behind his Delphian cliff he sinks to sleep." The columns of the temple of Jupiter Olympius produced the same effects on the enthusiastic mind of Chateau- briand as they do on every traveller. But he has added some reflections highly descriptive of the peculiar turn of his mind. '' At_ length we came to the gi'eat isolated columns placed in the quarter which is called the city of Adrian. On a portion of the architrave which unites two of the columns, is to be seen a piece of masonry, once the abode of a hermit. It is impossible to conceive how that building, which is still CHATEAUBEIAXD. 31 entii'e, could have been erected on the summit of one of these prodigious columns, whose height is above sixty feet. Thus this vast temple, at which the Athenians toiled for seven centuries, which all the kings of Asia laboured to finish, which Adrian, the ruler of the world, had first the glory to com- plete, has sunk under the hand of time, and the cell of a hermit has remained undecayed on its ruins. A miserable cabin is borne aloft on two columns of marble, as if fortune had wished to exhibit, on that magnificent pedestal, a monument of its triumph and its caprice. "These columns, though twenty feet higher than those of the Parthenon, are far from possessing their beauty. The degeneracy of taste is apparent in their construction ; but isolated and dispersed as they are, on a naked and desert plain, their effect is imposing in the highest degree. I stopped at their feet to hear the wind whistle through the Corinthian foliage on then- sum- mits ; like the solitary palms which rise here and there amidst the ruins of Alexandria. When the Turks are threatened by any calamity, they bring a lamb into this place, and constrain it to bleat, with its face turned to heaven. Being unable to find the voice of innocence among men, they have recourse to the new-born lamb to mitigate the auger of heaven." — Vol. i. 152, 153. He followed the footsteps of Chandler along the Long Walls to the Pii'ceus, and found that profound solitude in that once busy and animated scene, whicli is felt to be so impressive by every traveller. " If Chandler was astonished at the solitude of the Pirasus, I can safely assert that I was not less astonished than he. We had made the circuit of that desert shore ; three harbours had met our eyes, and in all that space we had not seen a single vessel! The only spectacle to be seen was the ruins and the rocks on the shore — the only sounds that could be heard were the cry of the seafowl, and the murmur of the wave, which, breaking on the tomb of Themistocles, drew forth a perpetual sigh from the abode of eternal silence. Borne away by the sea, the ashes of the conqueror of Xerxes repose beneath the waves, side by side with the bones of the Persians. In vain I sought the Temple of Venus, the long gallery, and the symbolical statue which represented the Athenian people ; the image of that implacable democracy was for ever fallen, beside the walls wdiere the exiled citizens came to implore a return to their country. Instead of those superb arsenals, of those Agorae resounding with the voice of the sailors ; of those edifices which rivalled the beauty of the city of Ehodes, I saw nothing but a ruined convent and a solitary magazine. A single Turkish sentinel is perpetually seated on the coast ; months and years revolve without a bark presenting itself to his sight. Such is the deplorable state into which these ports, once so famous, have now fallen. Who has overturned so many monu- ments of gods and men ? The hidden power which overthrows everything, and is itself subject to the Unknown God whose altar St Paul beheld at Phalera."— Vol. i. 157, 158. The fruitful theme of the decay of Greece has called forth many of the finest apostrophes of our moralists and poets. On this subject Chateaubriand offers the following striking observations : — " One would imagine that Greece itself announced, by its mourning, the misfortunes of its children. In general, the country is uncultivated, the soil 32 CHATEAUBRIAND. bare, rough, savage, of a brown and withered aspect. There are no rivers, properly so called, but little streams and torrents, which become dry in summer. No farm-houses are to be seen on the farms ; no labourers, no chariots, no oxen, or horses of agriculture. Nothing can be figured so melancholy as to see the track of a modern wheel, where you can still trace in the worn parts of the rock the track of ancient wheels. Coast along that shore, bordered by a sea hardly more desolate ; place on the summit of a rock a ruined tower, an abandoned convent ; figure a minaret rising up in the midst of the solitude as a badge of slavery— a solitary flock feeding on a cape, surmounted by ruined columns— the turban of a Turk scaring the few goats which browse on the hills, and you will obtain a just idea of modern Greece. " On the eve of leaving Greece, at the Cape of Sunium, I did not abandon myself alone to the romantic ideas which the beauty of the scene was fitted to inspire. I retraced in my mind the history of that country ; I strove to discover in the ancient prosperity of Athens and Sparta the cause of their present misfortunes, and in their present situation the germ of future glory. The breaking of the sea, which insensibly increased against the rocks at the foot of the Cape, at length reminded me that the wind had risen, and that it was time to resume my voyage. We descended to the vessel, and found the sailors already prepared for our departure. We pushed out to sea, and the breeze, which blew fresh from the land, bore us rapidly towards Zea. As we receded from the shore, the columns of Sunium rose more beautiful above the waves : their pure white appeared well defined in the dark azure of the distant sky. We were already far from the Cape ; but we still heard the murmur of the waves, which broke on the cliffs at its foot, the whistle of the winds through its solitary pillars, and the cry of the sea-birds which wheel round the stormy promontory ; they were the last sounds which I heard on the shores of Greece." — Vol. i. 196. " The Greeks did not excel less in the choice of the site of their edifices than in the forms and proportions. The greater part of the promontories of Peloponnesus, Attica, and Ionia, and the Islands of the Archipelago, are marked by temples, trophies, or tombs. These monuments, surrounded as they generally are with woods and rocks, beheld in all the changes of light and shadow, sometimes in the midst of clouds and lightning, sometimes by the light of the moon, sometimes gilded by the rising sun, sometimes flaming in his setting beams, throw an indescribable charm over the shores of Greece. The earth, thus decorated, resembles the old Cybele, who, crowned and seated on the shore, commanded her son Neptune to spread the waves beneath her feet. " Christianity, to which we owe the sole architectm*e in unison with our manners, has also taught how to place our true monuments : our chapels, our abbeys, our monasteries, are dispersed on the summits of hills ; not that the choice of the site was always the work of the architect, but that an art which is in unison with the feelings of the people, seldom errs far in what is really beautiful. Observe, on the other hand, how wretchedly almost all our edifices copied from the antique are placed. Not one of the heights around Paris is ornamented with any of the splendid edifices with which the city is filled. The modern Greek edifices resemble the corrupted language which they speak at Sparta and Athens : it is in vain to maintain that it is the language of Homer and Plato ; a mixture of uncouth words, and of foreign constructions, betrays at every instant the invasion of the barbarians. " To the loveliest sunset in nature succeeded a serene night. The fii'ma- ment, reflected in the waves, seemed to sleep in the midst of the sea. The evening star, my faithful companion in my journey, was ready to sink beneath the horizon ; its place could only be distinguished by the rays of light which it occasionally shed upon the water, like a dying taper in the distance. At intervals, the perfumed breeze from the islands which we CHATEAUBRIAND. 33 passed entranced the senses, and agitated on the surface of the ocean the glassy image of the heavens." — Yol. i. 182, 183. The appearance of morning in the sea of Marmora is described in not less glowing colours. " At four in the morning we weighed anchor, and as the wind was fair, we found ourselves in less than an hour at the extremity of the waters of the river. The scene was worthy of being described. On the right, Aurora rose above the headlands of Asia ; on the left was extended the sea of Mar- mora ; the heavens in the east were of a fiery red, which grew paler in proportion as the morning advanced ; the morning star still shone in that empurpled light ; and above it you could barely descry the pale circle of the moon. The picture changed while I still contemplated it ; soon a blended glory of rays of rose and gold, diverging from a common centre, mounted to the zenith: these columas were effaced, revived, and effaced anew, until the sun rose above the horizon, and confounded all the lesser shades in one universal blaze of light." — Vol. i. 236. His journey into the Holy Land awakened a new and not less interesting train of ideas, throughout the whole of which we recognise the peculiar features of M. de Chateau- briand's mind : a strong and poetical sense of the beauties of nature — a memory fraught with historical recollections — a deep sense of religion, manifested, however, rather as it affects the imagination and the passions than the judgment. It is a mere chimera to suppose that such aids are to be rejected by the friends of Christianity, or that truth may with safety discard the aid of fancy, either in subduing the passions or affecting the heart. On the contrary, every day's experience must convince us that, for one who can understand an argument, hundreds can enjoy a romance ; and that truth, to affect multitudes, must condescend to wear the garb of fancy. It is, no doubt, of vast importance that works should exist in which the truths of religion are unfolded with lucid precision, and its principles defined with the force of reason ; but it is at least of equal moment that others should be found in which the graces of eloquence and the fervour of enthusiasm form an attraction to those who are insensible to graver considerations ; where the reader is tempted to follow a path which he finds only strewed with flowers, and he unconsciously inhales the breath of eternal life. " Cosi all Egro fanciul porgiamo aspersi Di soave licor gK orsi del vaso, Succhi amari ingaimato intanto el beve, E dal inganno sua vita riceve." VOL. III. C 34 CHATEAUBRIAXD. " On Hearing tlie coast of Judea, the first visitors we received were three swallows. They were perhaps od their way from France, and pursuing their course to Syria. I was strongly tempted to ask them what news they brought from that paternal roof which I had so long quitted. I recollect that, in years of infancy, I spent entire hours in watching with an inde- scribable pleasure the course of swallows in autumn, when assembling in crowds previous to their annual migration : a secret instinct told me that I too should be a traveller. They assembled in the end of autumn around a great fishpond ; there, amidst a thousand evolutions and flights in air, they seemed to try their wings, and prepare for their long pilgrimage. Whence is it that, of all the recollections in existence, we prefer those which are connected with our cradle? The illusions of self-love, the pleasures of youth, do not recur with the same charm to the memory ; we find in them, on the contrary, frequent bitterness and pain; but the slightest circumstances revive in the heart the recollections of infancy, and always with a fresh charm. On the shores of the lakes in America, in an unknown desert, which was sublime only from the eliect of solitude, a swallow has frequently recalled to my recollection the first years of my life ; as here, on the coast of Syria, they recalled them in sight of an ancient land resounding with the traditions of history and the voice of ages. '' The air was so fresh and so balmy, that all the passengers remained on deck during the night. At six in the morning I was awakened by a con- fused hum ; I opened my eyes, and saw all the pilgrims crowding towards the prow of the vessel. I asked what it was? they all replied, ' Signor, il Carmelo.' I instantly rose from the plank on which I was stretched, and eagerly looked out for the sacred mountain. Every one strove to show it to me, but I could see nothing by reason of the dazzling of the sun, which now rose above the horizon. The moment had something in it that was august and impressive ; all the pilgrims, with their chaplets in their hands, remained in silence, watching for the appearance of the Holy Land ; the captain prayed aloud, and not a sound was to be heard but that prayer and the rush of the vessel, as it ploughed with a fair wind through the azure sea. From time to time the cry arose, from those in elevated parts of the vessel, that they saw Mount Carmel, and at length I myself perceived it like a round globe under the rays of the sun. I then fell on my knees, after the manner of the Latin pilgrims. My first impression was not the kind of agitation which I experienced on approaching the coast of Greece, but the sight of the cradle of the Israelites, and of the country of Christ, filled me with awe and veneration. I was about to descend on the land of miracles — on the birthplace of the sublimest poetry that has ever appeared on earth — on the spot where, speaking only as it has aifected human history, the most wonderful event has occurred which ever changed the destinies of the species. I was about to visit the scenes which had been seen before me by Godfrey of Bouillon, Raymond of Toulouse, Tancred the Brave, Richard Cceur-de-Lion, and Saint Louis, whose virtues even the infidels respected. How could an obscure pilgrim like myself dare to tread a soil ennobled by such recollections !"— Vol. i. 263-265. Nothinoj is more strikinoj in the whole \york than the description of the Dead Sea and the Valley of Jordan. He has contrived to bring the features of that extraordinary scene more completely before us than any of the numerous English trayellers who have preceded or followed him on the same route. " Wc quitted the convent at three in the afternoon, ascended the torrent CHATEAUBPJAXD. 35 of Cedron, and at length, crossing the ravine, rejoined our route to the east. An opening in the mountain gave us a passing view of Jerusalem. I hardly recognised the city ; it seemed a mass of broken rocks ; the sudden appear- ance of that city of desolation in the midst of the wilderness had something in it almost terrifying. She was, in truth, the Queen of the Desert. " As we advanced, the aspect of the mountains continued constantly the same, that is, a powdery white — without shade, a tree, or even moss. At half-past four, we descended from the lofty chain we had hitherto traversed, and wound along another of inferior elevation. At length we arrived at the last of the chain of heights, which close in on the west the Valley of Jordan and the Dead Sea. The sun was nearly setting ; we dismounted from our horses, and I lay down to contemplate at leisure the lake, the valley, and the river. " When you speak in general of a valley, you conceive it either cultivated or uncultivated ; if the former, it is filled with villages, corn-fields, vine- yards, and fiocks ; if the latter, it presents grass or forests ; if it is watered by a river, that river has windings, and the sinuosities or projecting points afford agreeable and varied landscapes. But here there is nothing of the kind. Conceive two long chains of mountains running parallel from north to south, without projections, without recesses, without vegetation. The ridge on the east, called the Mountains of Arabia, is the most elevated ; viewed at the distance of eight or ten leagues, it resembles a vast wall, extremely similar to the Jura, as seen from the Lake of Geneva, from its form and azure tint. You can perceive neither summits nor the smallest peaks ; only here and there slight inequalities, as if the hand of the painter who traced the long lines on the sky had occasionally trembled. " The chain on the eastern side forms part of the mountains of Judea— • less elevated and more uneven than the ridge on the west : it difters also in its character ; it exhibits great masses of rock and sand, which occasionally present all the varieties of ruined fortifications, armed men, and floating banners. On the side of Arabia, on the other hand, black rocks, with per- pendicular flanks, spread from afar their shadows over the waters of the Dead Sea. The smallest bird could not find in those crevices of rock a morsel of food ; everything announces a country which has fallen under the divine wrath ; everything inspires the horror at the incest from whence sprang Ammon and Moab. '' The valley which lies between these mountains resembles the bottom of a sea, from which the waves have long ago withdrawn : banks of gravel, a dried bottom, rocks covered with salt, deserts of moving sand : here and there stunted arbutus shrubs grow with difficulty on that arid soil ; then- leaves are covered with the salt which had nourished their roots, while their bark has the scent and taste of smoke. Instead of villages, nothing but the ruins of towers are to be seen. Through the midst of the valley flows a discoloured stream, which seems to drag its lazy course unwillingly towards the lake. Its course is not to be discerned by the water, but by the willows and shrubs which skirt its banks— the Arab conceals himself in these thickets to waylay and rob the pilgrim. " Such are the places rendered famous by the malediction of Heaven : that river is the Jordan— that lake is the Dead Sea. It appears with a serene surface ; but the guilty cities which are embosomed in its waves have poisoned its waters. Its solitary abysses can sustain the life of no living thing ; no vessel ever ploughed its bosom ; its shores are without trees, without birds, without verdure ; its water, frightfully salt, is so heavy that the highest wind can hardly raise it. '^ In travelling in Judea, an extreme feeling of ennui frequently seizes the mind, from the sterile and monotonous aspect of the objects which are pre- sented to the eye ; but when journeying on through these pathless deserts, the expanse seems to spread out to infinity before you, the ennui disappears, 36 CHATEAUBRIAND. aud a secret terror is experienced, which, far from lowering the soul, elevates and inflames the genius. These extraordinary scenes reveal the laud deso- lated by miracles ; that burning sun, the impetuous eagle, the barren fig- tree — all the poetry, all the pictures of Scripture are there. Every name recalls a mystery ; every grotto speaks of the life to come ; every peak re-echoes the voice of a prophet. God Himself has spoken on these shores : these diied-up torrents, these cleft rocks, these tombs rent asunder, attest His resistless hand : the desert appears mute with terror ; and you feel that it has never ventured to break silence since it heard the voice of the Eternal." —Vol. i. 317. " I employed two complete hours in wandering on the shores of the Dead Sea, notwithstanding the remonstrances of the Bedouins, who pressed me to quit that dangerous region, I was desirous of seeing the Jordan, at the place where it discharges itself into the lake ; but the Arabs refused to lead me thither, because the river, at a league from its mouth, makes a detour to the left, and approaches the mountains of Arabia. It was necessary, therefore, to direct our steps towards the curve which was nearest us. We struck our tents, and travelled for an hour and a half with excessive diffi- culty, through a fine and silvery sand. We were moving towards a little wood of willows and tamarinds, which, to my great surprise, I perceived growing in the midst of the desert. All of a sudden the Bethlemites stop- ped, and pointed to something at the bottom of a ravine, which had not yet attracted my attention. Without being able to say what it was, I perceived a sort of sand rolling on through the fixed banks which surrounded it. I approached it, and saw a yellow stream which could hardly be distinguished from the sand of its two banks. It was deeply furrowed through the rocks, and with difficulty rolled on, a stream surcharged with sand : it was the Jordan. " I had seen the great rivers of America, with the pleasure which is inspired by the magnificent works of nature. I had hailed the Tiber with ardour, and sought with the same interest the Eurotas and the Cephisus; but on none of these occasions did I experience the intense emotion which I felt on approaching the Jordan. Xot only did that river recall the earliest antiquity, and a name rendered immortal in the finest poetry, but its banks were the theatre of the miracles of our religion. Judea is the only country which recalls at once the earliest recollections of man, and our first impres- sions of heaven ; and thence arises a mixture of feeling in the mind, which no other part of the world can produce." — Vol. i. 327, 328. The peculiar turn of his mind renders our author, in an especial manner, partial to the description of sad and solitary scenes. The following description of the Valley of Jehoshaphat is in his best style : — " The Valley of Jehoshaphat has in all ages served as the burying- place to Jerusalem : you meet there, side by side, monuments of the most distant times and of the present century. The Jews still come there to die, from all the corners of the earth. A stranger sells to them, for almost its weight in gold, the land which contains the bones of their fathers. Solomon planted that valley : the shadow of the Temple by which it was overhung— the torrent, called after grief, which traversed it— the Psalms which David there composed— the Lamentations of Jeremiah, which its rocks re-echoed, render it the fitting abode of the tomb. Jesus Christ commenced his lassion m the same place: that innocent David there shed, for the expia- tion of our sins, those tears which the guilty David let fall for his own transgressions. Few names awaken in our minds recollections so solemn as the Valley of Jehoshaphat. It is so full of mysteries, that, according to CHATEAUBRIAKD. 37 the Prophet Joel, all mankind will be assembled there before the Eternal Judge. "The aspect of this celebrated valley is desolate; the western side is bounded by a ridge of lofty rocks which support the walls of Jerusalem, above which the towers of the city appear. The eastern is formed by the Mount of Olives, and another eminence called the Mount of Scandal, from the idolatry of Solomon. These two mountains, which adjoin each other, are almost bare, and of a red and sombre hue ; on their desert side you see here and there some black and withered vineyards, some wild olives, some ploughed land, covered with hyssop, and a few ruined chapels. At the bottom of the valley, you perceive a torrent, traversed by a single arch, which appears of gi'eat antiquity The stones of the Jewish cemetery appear like a mass of ruins at the foot of the Mountain of Scandal, under the village of Siloam. You can hardly distinguish the buildings of the village from the ruins with which they are surrounded. Three ancient monuments are particularly conspicuous : those of Zachariah, Jehoshaphat, and Absalom. The sadness of Jerusalem, from which no smoke ascends, and in which no sound is to be heard ; the solitude of the surrounding mountains, where not a living creature is to be seen ; the disorder of those tombs, ruined, ransacked, and half- exposed to view, would almost induce one to believe that the last trump had been heard, and that the dead were about to rise in the Valley of Jehoshaphat." — Vol. ii. 34, 35. Chateaubriand, after visiting with the devotion of a pilgrim the Holy Sepulchre, and all the scenes of our Saviour's sufferings, spent a day in examining the scenes of the Crusaders^ triumphs, and comparing the descriptions in Tasso's Jerusalem Delivered with the places where the events which thej recorded actually occurred. He found them in general so extremely exact, that it was difficult to avoid the conviction that the poet had been on the spot. He even fancied he discovered the scene of the Flight of Erminia, and the inimitable combat and death of Clorinda. From the Holy Land he sailed to Egypt; and we have the following graphic picture of the approach to that cradle of art and civilisation : — " On the 20th October, at five in the morning, I perceived on the green and ruffled surface of the water a line of foam, and beyond it a pale and still ocean. The captain clapped me on the shoulder, and said in French, ' Nile ; ' and soon we entered and glided through those celebrated waters. A few palm-trees and a minaret announce the situation of Rosetta, but the town itself is invisible. These shores resemble those of the coast of Florida ; they are totally diiferent from those of Italy or Greece ; everything recalls the tropical regions. " At ten o'clock we at length discovered, beneath the palm -trees, a line of sand which extended westward to the promontory of Abonkir, before which we were obliged to pass before arriving opposite to Alexandria. At five in the evening the shore suddenly changed its aspect. The palm-trees seemed planted in lines along the shore, like the elms along the roads in France. Nature appears to take a pleasure in thus recalling the ideas of civilisation in a country where that civilisation first arose, and barbarism 38 CHATEAUBRIAND. has now resumed its sway. It was eleven o'clock when we cast anchor before the citv, and as it was some time before we could get ashore, I had full leisure to' follow out the contemplation which the scene awakened. " I saw on my right several vessels, and the castle, which stands on the site of the Tower of Pharos. On my left, the horizon seemed shut in by sand-hills, ruins, and obelisks ; immediately in front extended a loug wall, with a few houses appearing above it; not a light was to be seen on shore, and not a sound came from the city. This, nevertheless, was Alexandria, the rival of Nemphis and Thebes, which once contained three millions of inhabitants, which was the sanctuary of the Muses, and the abode of science amidst a benighted world. Here were heard the orgies of Antony and Cleopatra, and here was Cffisar received with more than regal splendour by the Queen of the East. But in vain I listened. A fatal talisman had plunged the people into a hopeless calm : that talisman is the despotism which extinguishes every joy, which stifles even the cry of suffering. And what sound could arise in a city of which at least a third is abandoned ; another third of which is surrounded only by the tombs of its former inhabitants ; and of which the third which still survives between those dead extremities, is a species of breathing trunk, destitute of the force even to shake off its chains, and placed between ruins and the tomb ?" —Vol. ii. 163. It is to be regretted that Chateaubriand did not visit Upper Egypt. His ardent and learned mind would have found ample room for eloquent declamation amidst the gigantic ruins of Luxor, and the Sphinx aA^enues of Thebes. The inundation of the Nile, however, prevented him from seeing even the Pyramids nearer than Grand Cairo; and when on the verge of that interesting region, he was compelled unwillingly to retrace his steps to the French shores. After a tempestuous voyage along the coast of Libya, he cast anchor off the ruins of Carthage; and thus he describes his feelings on surveying those venerable remains : — " From the summit of Byrsa the eye embraces the ruins of Carthage, which are more considerable than are generally imagined : they resemble those of Sparta, having nothing well preserved, but embracing a consider- able space. I saw them in the middle of February : the olives, the fig-trees, were already bursting into leaf: large bushes of angelica and acanthus formed tufts of verdure, amidst the remains of marble of every colour. In the distance, I cast my eyes over the Isthmus, the double sea, the distant isles, a cerulean sea, a smiling plain, and azure mountains. I saw forests, and vessels, and aqueducts ; JNIoorish villages, and Mahometan hermitages; glittering minarets, and the white buildings of Tunis. Surrounded with the most touching recollections, I thought alternately of Dido, Sophonisba, and the noble wife of Asdrubal ; I contemplated the vast plains where the legions of Hannibal, Scipio, and Caesar were buried : My eyes sought for the sight of Utica. Alas ! The remains of the palace of Tiberius still exist in the island of Capri, and you search in vain at Utica for the house of Cato. Finally, the terrible Vandals, the rapid Moors, passed before my recollection, wliich fixed at last on Saint Louis expiring on that inhospitable shore. May the story of the death of that prince terminate this itinerary ; fortunate to re-enter, as it were, into my countiy CHATEAUBRIAND. 39 by the ancient monument of his virtues, and to close at the sepulchre of that King of holy memory my long pilgrimage to the tombs of illustrious men."— Vol. ii. 267, 258. " As long as his strength permitted, the dying monarch gave instructions to his son Philip ; and when his voice failed him, he wrote with a faltering hand these precepts, which no Frenchman, worthy of the name, will ever be able to read without emotion. ' My son, the first thing which I enjoin you is to love God with all your heart ; for without that no man can be saved. Beware of violating His laws ; rather endure the worst torments than sin against His commandments. Should He send you adversity, receive it with humility, and bless the hand Avhich chastens you ; and believe that you have well deserved it, and that it will turn to your weal. Should He try you with prosperity, thank Him with humility of heart, and be not elated by His goodness. Do justice to everyone, as well the poor as the rich. Be liberal, free, and courteous to your servants, and cause them to love as well as fear you. Should any controversy or tumult arise, sift it to the bottom, whether the result be favourable or unfavourable to your interests. Take care, in an especial manner, that your subjects live in peace and tranquillity under your reign. Respect and preserve their privileges, such as they have received them from their ancestors, and preserve them with care and love. And now, I give you every blessing which a father can bestow on his child ; praying the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, that they may defend you from all adversities ; and that we may again, after this mortal life is ended, be united before God, and adore His majesty for ever !'" — Vol. ii. 264. " The style of Cliateaubriand," sajs Napoleon, " is not that of Racine, it is that of a prophet ; he has received from nature the sacred flame; it breathes in all his works."''" It is of no common man — being a political opponent- — that Napoleon would have said these words. Chateaubriand had done nothing to gain favour with the French Emperor ; on the contrary, he irritated him by throwing up his employ- ment and leaving his country, upon the assassination of the Duke d'Enghien. In truth, nothing is more remarkable, amidst the selfishness of political apostasy in France, than the uniform consistence and disinterestedness of this great man^s opinions. His principles, indeed, were not all the same at fifty as at twenty-five ; we should be glad to know whose are, excepting those who are so obtuse as to derive no light from the extension of knowledge and the acquisitions of experience '? Change is so far from being despicable, that it is higlily honourable in itself, and when it proceeds from the natural modification of the mind from the progress of years, or the lessons of more extended experience. It be- comes contemptible only when it arises on the suggestions of interest, or the desires of ambition. Now, Chateaubriand's * Memoirs oj Na'polton, iv. 342. 40 CHATEAUBRIAND. changes of opiuiou liave all been in opposition to liis interest ; and he has suffered at different periods of his life from his resistance to the mandates of authority, and his rejection of the calls of ambition. In early life he was exiled from France, and shared in all the hardships of the emigrants, from his attachment to Royalist principles. At the earnest request of Napoleon, he accepted office under the Imperial GoYernment, but he relinquished it, and again became an exile upon the murder of the Duke d'Enghien. The influ- ence of his writings was so powerful in favour of the Bour- bons, at the period of the Restoration, that Louis XVIII. truly said, they were worth more than an army. He followed the dethroned monarch to Ghent, and contributed much, by his powerful genius, to consolidate the feeble elements of his power, after the fall of Napoleon. Called to the helm of affairs in 1824, he laboured to accommodate the temper of the monarchy to the increasing spirit of freedom in the country, and fell into disgrace with the Court, and was dis- trusted by the Royal Family, because he strove to introduce those popular modifications into the administration of affairs, which might have prevented the Revolution of July ; and finally, he has resisted all the efforts of the Citizen King to engage his great talents in defence of the throne of the Barricades. True to his principles, he has exiled himself from France, to preserve his independence ; and consecrated in a foreign land his illustrious name to the defence of the child of misfortune. Chateaubriand is not only an eloquent and beautiful writei*, he is also a profound scholar, and an enlightened thinker. His knowledge of history and classical literature is equalled only by his intimate acquaintance with the early annals of the church, and the fathers of the Catholic faith ; while in his speeches delivered in the Chamber of Peers since the Restoration, will be found not only the most eloquent, but the most complete and satisfactory dissertations on the poli- tical state of France during that period, which are anywhere to be met with. It is a singular circumstance, that an author of such great and varied acquirements, who is universally allowed by all parties in France to be their greatest living writer, should hardly be known except by name to the great body of readers in this country. CHATEAUBRIAND. 41 His greatest work, that on which his fame will rest with posterity, is the Genius of Christianity, from which such ample quotations have already been given. The next is the Martyrs, a romance, in which he has introduced an exemplification of the principles of Christianity, in the early sufferings of the primitive church, and enriched the narrative by the splendid description of the scenery in Egypt, Greece, and Palestine, which he had visited during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and all the stores of learning which a life spent in classical and ecclesiastical lore could accumulate. The last of his considerable publications is the Etudes Historiques, a work eminently characteristic of that supe- riority in historical composition, which we have allowed to the French modern writers over their contemporaries in this country ; and which, we fear, another generation, instructed when too late by the blood and the tears of a Revolution, will alone be able fully to appreciate. Its object is to trace the influence of Christianity from its first spread in the Roman empire to the rise of civilisation in the Western world ; a field in which he goes over the ground trod by Gibbon, and demonstrates the unbounded benefits derived from religion in all the institutions of modern times. In this noble undertaking he has been aided, with a still more phi- losophical mind, though inferior fire and eloquence, by Guizot — a writer who, equally with his illustrious rival, is as yet unknown, save by report, in this country, but from whose joint labours is to be dated the spring of a pure and philosophical system of rehgious inquiry in France, and the commencement of that revival of manly devotion in which the antidote, and the only antidote, to the fanaticism of infidelity is to be found. YIKGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, April 1845] Oetgixality of conception and fidelity of observation in general mark the efforts of genius in the earlier ages of society ; and it is then, accordingly, that those creative minds appear which stamp their own impress upon the character of a whole people, and communicate to their litera- ture, in the most distant periods, a certain train of thought, a certain class of images, a certain family resemblance. Homer, Phidias, and ^schylus in ancient times ; Dante, Michael Angelo, Ariosto, and Shakspeare in modern, belong to this exalted class. Each, in his own department, has struck out a new range of thought, and created a fresh brood of ideas, which on " winded w^ords" have taken their flio^ht to distant regions, and to tlie end of the world will never cease to delight and influence mankind. Subsequent ages may refine their images, expand their sentiments, perhaps improve their expression ; but they add little to the stock of their conceptions. The very greatness of their predeces- sors precludes fresh creations : the furrows of the ancient wheels are so deep that the modern chariot cannot avoid falling into them. So completely, in all persons of educa- tion, are the great works of antiquity incorporated with thought, that they arise involuntarily with every exercise of the faculty of taste, and insensibly recur to the cultivated mind, with all that it admires, and loves, and venerates in the world. But though originality of conception, the creation of imagery, and the invention of events belong to early ages, delicacy of taste, refinement of sentiment, perfection of expression, are the growth of a more advanced period of VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. 43 society. The characters which are delineated bj the hand of Genius in early times, are those bold and original ones in which the features are distinctly marked, the lines clearly drawn, the peculiarities strongly brought out. The images which are adopted are those which have first occurred to the creative mind in forming a world of fancy ; the similes employed, those which convey to the simple and unlettered mind the clearest or most vivid conception of the idea or event intended to be illustrated. Valour, pride, resolution, tenderness, patriotism, are the mental qualities which are there portrayed in imaginary characters, and called forth by fictitious events : and it is this first and noblest delineation of mental qualities in a historical gallery which has rendered the Iliad immortal. The images and similes of Homer are drawn from a close observation of nature, but they are not very varied in their range : he paints every incident, every occurrence, every feature, but he is not much diversified in conception, and surprisingly identical in expression. His similes of a boar beset by hunters, of a lion prowling round a fold and repelled by the spear of the shepherd, of a pan- ther leaping into a herd of cattle, of a mountain torrent bearing all before it in its furious descent, are represented in the same words wherever he has a close fight of one of his heroes with a multitude of enemies to recount, or the fell swoop of victorious onset to portray. So forcibly is the creative mind, in the first instance, fascinated by the variety and brilliancy of its conceptions, that it neglects and despises their subordinate details. It is careless of expression, because it is intent on ideas : it is niggardly in language, because it is prodigal of thought. Homer's expressions or epithets are, in general, admirably chosen, and speak at once a graphic eye and an imaginative mind ; but it is extra- ordinary how often they recur without any variation. It is the same with Ariosto : he is somewhat more varied in his expression, but even more identical in his details. Prodigal of invention, varied in imagination, unbounded in conception, in the incidents and great features of his story, he has very little diversity in its subordinate parts. He carries us over the whole earth, through the air, and to the moon : but giants, castles, knights, and errant damsels, occur at every step, with hardly any alteration. The perpetual jousts of 44 VIRGIL, TASSO, AND llAPHAEL. the kuiglits, charging with the laiice and then drawing the sword, are exactly parallel to the endless throwing of the spear and leaping from the chariot in the Iliad. No man can read the J^neid without seeing that it has been constructed, both in its general conception and cliief incidents, on the poems of Homer ; and jet so exquisite was the taste, so refined the sentiment, so tender the heart of Virgil, that he has produced upon the world the impres- sion of a great original author, and his fame is second only to the immortal author of the Iliad. Dante worshipped him as a species of divinity ; he made him his guide through the infernal regions, to unfold the crimes of the wicked, and the intentions of the Deity in the distribution of future rewards and punishments. Throughout the Middle Ages he was regarded as a sort of necromancer, a mighty magician, to whom the past and the future were alike known, and w^hose power even the elements of nature were constrained to obey. The " Sortes Virgillianse,'' so well known and so long prac- tised in every country of Europe, arose from this belief. The imagery, mythology, and characters of his epic poem are draw^n from the Iliad ; but in two particulars he is entirely original, and his genius has opened the two fountains from which the most prolific streams of beauty in modern poetry have flowed. He is the father of descriptive and amato?y poetry. The passion of love, as we understand it, was unknown to Homer, as much as was the description of nature as a separate and substantive object. He has made the whole Iliad, indeed, turn upon the wrath of Achilles for the loss of Briseis ; and he has painted, with inimitable tenderness and pathos, the conjugal attachment of Hector and Andromache ; but he hacl no conception of love as a passion, mingled with sentiment and independent of posses- sion. The wrath of Achilles is the fury of an Eastern sultan whose harem has been violated : the parting of Hector and Andromache is the rending asunder of the domestic affections, the farewell from the family hearth, the breaking up of the home circle. But the love of Dido for ^neas is the refined passion which is the soul of the romances and of half the poetry of modern times. It was the creature of the imagination, the offspring of the soul from its own concep- tions, kindled only into life by an external object. It arose VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. 45 from mental admiration ; it was inhaled more by the ear than the eye ; it was warmed at his recital of the sack of Troy, and the subsequent wanderings of its exiled hero over the melancholy main. It had no resemblance to the seducing yoluptuousness of Ovid, any more than the elegant indecencies of Catullus. It resembled the passion of Desde- mona for Othello, the devotion of Corinne to Oswald. Homer painted with graphic fidelity and incomparable force, often with extraordinary beauty, the appearances of nature ; but it was as illustrations, or for the purpose of similitude only that he did so. It was on human events that his thoughts were fixed : it was the human heart, in all its various forms and changes, that he sought to depict. But Virgil was the high-priest of nature, and he worshipped her with all a poet's fervour. He identifies himself with rural life ; he describes with devout enthusiasm its joys, its occu- pations, its hardships : the rocks, the woods, the streams, awaken his ardent admiration ; the animals and insects are the objects of his tender solicitude. When the Mantuan bard wrote, — -" Ssepe exiguus mus Sub terrain posuit domos atque horrea fecit,"* he was inspired with the same spirit that afterwards ani- mated Burns when he contemplated the daisy, Cowper when he sympathised with the hare. The descriptive poetry of modern times has owed much to his exquisite eye and sen- sitive heart. Thomson, in his Seasons, has expanded the theme in a kindred spirit, and with prodigal magnificence. Scott and Byron have brought that branch of the poetic art to the highest perfection, by blending it with the moral afi'ections, with the picturesque imagery of the olden time, with the magic of Eastern or classical association. But none of our poets, how great soever their genius, how varied their materials, have exceeded, if they have equalled, the exquisite beauty of his descriptions ; and the purest taste in observa- tion, as the utmost beauty of expression, is still to be best attained by studying, night and day, tlie poems of Virgil. Modern epic poetry arose in a different age, and was * " Oft a little mouse Beneath the earth its home hath made, And spread its stores." 46 VIRGTL, TASSO, AXD EAPHAEL. moulded hy different circumstances. The mythology of antiquity was at an end, and with it had perished the gay and varied worship which had so long amused or excited an imaginative people. The empire of the Csesars, with its grandeur and its recollections, had sunk into the dust ; the venerable letters, S. P. Q. R., no longer commanded the vene- ration save of the lettered part of mankind. A new faith, enjoining moral duties, had descended upon the earth : a holier spirit had come to pervade the breasts of the faithful. An unknown race of fierce barbarians had broken into the decaying provinces of the Roman empire, and swept away their government, their laws, their property, and their insti- tutions. But the Christian faith had proved more powerful than the arms of the legions ; it alone had survived amidst the general wreck of the civilised world. iNIingling with the ardent feelings and fierce energy of the barbarian victors, it sat bloomiuo- bride By valour's arm'd and awful side." Incorporating itself with the very souls of the conquerors — descending on their heads with the waters of baptism, never leaving them till the moment of extreme unction — it moulded between these two extremes their whole character. A new principle superior to all earthly power was introduced — a paramount authority established, to which even the arm of victorious conquest was compelled to submit — ruthless warriors were seen kneeling at the feet of unarmed pontifi's. The crown of the Caesars had more than once been lowered before the cross of tlie Head of the faithful. From the intensity and universality of these religious emotions, and the circumstance of the Holy Land being in the hands of the Saracens, with whom Christendom had maintained so long, and at times so doubtful, a strugggle, a new passion had seized upon the people of modern Europe, to whicli no parallel is to be found in the previous or sub- sequent history of mankind. The desire to recover the Holy Sepulchre, and reopen it to the pilgrimages of the faithful, had come to inflame the minds of men with such vehemence, that nothing approaching to it had ever before occurred in the world. It had pervaded alike the great and the humble, the learned and the ignorant, the prince and the peasant. YIEGIL, TASSO, A^'D EAPHAEL. 47 It bad torn up whole nations from Europe, and precipitated them on Asia. It had caused myriads of armed men to cross the Hellespont. In Asia Minor, on the theatre of the contest of the Greeks and Trojans, it had brought vast armies into collision, far outnumbering the hosts led bj Hector and Agamemnon. It had brought them together in a holier cause, and from more elevated motives, than prompted the Greek confederates to range themselves under the King of Men. It had impelled Richard Ca3ur-de-Lion and Godfrey of Bouillon from Europe. It had roused Saladin and Solyman the Magnificent in Asia. Unlike other popular passions, it had continued through successive generations. It had survived for centuries, and declined at length less from want of ardour in the cause than from failure of the physical and material resources to maintain at so vast a distance so wasting a struggle, and supply the places of the multitudes of the faithful whose bones whitened the valley of the Danube or the sands of Asia. But religious and devout emotions had not alone become all-powerful from the blending of the ardour of a spiritual faith with the fierce energy of northern conquests. The northern nations had brought with them from their woods two principles unknown to the most civilised nations of antiquity. Tacitus has recorded that a nation in Germany maintained its authority solely by the justice of its decisions ; and that in all the tribes women were held in the highest respect, and frequently swayed the public councils on the most momentous occasions. It is in these two principles, the love of justice and respect for women, that the founda- tion was laid for the 7nanners of chivalry, which form the grand characteristic and most ennobling feature of modern times. New elements were thence infused into the breast of the warriors, into the heart of women, into the songs of poetry. Chivalry had arisen with its dreams, its imagina- tions, its fantasy ; but, at the same time, with its elevation, its disinterestedness, its magnanimity. The songs of the Troubadours had been heard in southern Europe ; the courts of love had been held in Provence ; the exploits of Charlemagne and Richard had resounded throughout the world. The chevalier sans peur et sans reproche, who dedicated himself to the service of God and of his lady, was 48 VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. a less natural, but he was a far more elevated being, than either Achilles or ^^neas. Knights-errant, who went about in quest of adventures, redressing wrongs, succouring dam- sels, combating giants, defying sorcerers, delivering captives — faithful amidst every temptation to their lady-love, true amidst every danger to the Pole-star of duty — formed the leading characters in a species of romance, which is less likely, in all probability, to be durable in fame than the Iliad or the Mneid; but which is so, in a great degree, from the circumstance that the characters it portrays had, from an extraordinary combination of events, been strung upon a higher key than is likely to be sympathised with by future generations of man. Ariosto was the great original mind in this extravagant but yet noble style of poetry ; he was the Homer of this romance of modern Europe. He possessed the same fruit- ful invention, the same diversified conception, the same inexhaustible fancy as the Grecian bard ; and in melody and occasional beauty of versification, he is often his superior. But he will bear no sort of comparison with Homer in knowledge of character or the delineation of the human heart. His heroes are almost all cast in one of two models, and bear one of two images and superscriptions. The Christian paladins are all gentle, true, devoted, magna- nimous, unconquerable ; the Saracen soldans haughty, cruel, perfidious, irascible, but desperately powerful in combat. No shades of difference and infinite diversity in character demonstrate, as in the Iliad, a profound knowledge and accurate observation of the human heart. No fierce and irascible Achilles disturbs the sympathy of the reader with the conquerors ; no self-forgetting and country-devoted Hector enlists our sympathies on the side of the vanquished. His imagination, like the w^inged steed of Astolfo, flies aw^ay w^ith his judgment ; it bears him to the uttermost parts of the earth, to the palace of the syren Alcina, to the halls in the moon ; but it destroys all unity or identity of interest in the poem. The famous siege of Paris by the Saracens in the time of Charlemagne, which was so often expected during the Middle Ages that it at last came to be believed to have been real, was the main point of his story ; but he diverges from it so often, in search of adventures with par- VIRGIL, TASSO, AND EAPHAEL. 49 ticular knights, that we wellnigh forget the principal object of the poem, and feel no absorbing interest in the issue of any particular events, or the exploits of any particular heroes. He had no great moral to unfold, or single interest to sustain, in his composition. His object was to amuse, not to instruct — to fascinate, not to improve. He is often as beautiful as Virgil in his descriptions, as lofty as Homer in his conceptions ; but he as often equals Ovid in the ques- tionable character of his adventures, or Catullus in the seducing warmth of his descriptions. There is no more amusing companion than the Orlando Furioso for the fire- side ; but there is none less likely to produce the ardent devotion, the forgetfulness of self, which are necessary to create the heroes whom it is his object to portray. That which Ariosto wants, Tasso has. The Jerusalem Delivered is, beyond all question, the epic poem of modern Europe. In it, as in the Iliad, unity of interest and of action is entirely preserved. It is one great struggle between Europe and Asia which is recorded ; it is for the attack and defence of one city that the forces of Christendom and of Mahometanism are arrayed. But the object of contention, the moral character of the struggle, is incomparably higher in the modern than the ancient poem. It is not " another Helen who has fired another Troy;" it is no confederacy of valour, thirsting for the spoils of opulence, which is contending for victory. It is the pilgrim, not the host, whose wrongs have now roused Europe into action ; it is not to ravish beauty from its seducer, but the Holy Sepulchre from its profaners, that Christendom has risen in arms. The characters of the chiefs correspond to the superior sanctity of their cause, and indicate the mighty step in advance which the human mind, under the influence of Christianity and civilisation, had made since the days of Homer. In Godfrey of Bouillon we perceive enthusiasm guided by wisdom, difficulties overcome by resolution, self subdued by devotion. Rinaldo, Uke Achilles, is led astray by beauty, and the issue of the war is prolonged from the want of his resistless arm ; but the difference between his passion for Armida, and the Grecian hero's wrath for the loss of Briseis, marks the influence of the refined gallantry of modern times. The exquisite episode of the flight of Erminia, the matchless VOL. III. D 50 YIRGIL, TASSO, AXD EAPHAEL. pathos of the death of Clorinda, -can be compared to nothing either in the Iliad or JEneid ; thej belong to the age of chivahy, and are the efflorescence of tliat strange but loftj aspiration of the human mind. Above all, there is a moral grandeur in the poem, a continued unity of interest, owing to a sustained elevation of purpose — a forge tfulness of self in the great cause of rescuing the Holy Sepulchre, which throws an air of sanctity around its beauties, and renders it the worthy epic of Europe in its noblest aspect. TSotwithstanding these inimitable beauties, the Jerusalem Delivered nexer has made, and never will make, the impression on the world which the Iliad has done. The reason is, that it is not equally drawn from nature. The characters are taken from romantic conception, not real life. The chiefs who assemble in council with Godfrey, the knights who strive before Jerusalem with Tancred, have little resemblance either to the greyhaired senators who direct human councils, or the youthful warriors who head actual armies. They are poetical abstractions, not living men. We read their speeches with interest, we contemplate their actions with admiration ; but it never occurs to us that we have seen such characters, or that the imagination of the poet has conceived anything resembling the occurrences of real life. The whole is a fairy dream — charming, interesting, delight- ful, but still a dream. It bears the same resemblance to reality which the brilliant gossamer of a snow-clad forest, glittering in the morning sun, does to the boughs when clothed with the riches and varied by the hues of summer. It is the perfection of our conceptions of chivalry, mingled with the picturesque machinery of antiquity and romantic imagery of the East, told with the exquisite beauty of European versification. But it is a poetical conception only, not a delineation of real life. In Homer, again, the marvellous power of the poet consists in his deep insight into human character, his perfect knowledge of the human heart, and his inimitable fidelity of drawing every object, animate or inanimate. Aristotle said that he excelled all poets that ever appeared in " hciymar Aristotle was right ; no one can study the Iliad without feeling the justice of the observation. It is the penetration, the piercing insight of the Greek bard in a manner throuoli the breast, which VIKGIL, TASSO, AXD RAPHAEL. 51 constitute his passport to immortality. Other poets may equal him in yariety of imagination ; some may excel him in melody of versification or beauty of language : none will probably ever approach him in delineation of character, or clothing abstract conceptions in the flesh and blood of real life. Considered with reference to unity of action and identity of interest, the Jerusalem Delivered, equal to the Iliad, is much superior to the ^neid. Virgil appears, in his admira- tion of Homer, to have aimed at uniting in his poem the beauties both of the Iliad and the Odyssey, and thence in a great measure his failure to rival either. While the first six books, which contain the wanderings of the Trojan exile and the dismal recital of the sack of Troy, are an evident imitation of the Odyssey, the last six, containing the strife in Italy, the efforts of the Trojans to gain a footing on the Ausonian shores, and the concluding single combat of Turnus and ^Eneas, are as evidently framed upon the model of the Iliad. But it is impossible in this manner to tack together two separate poems, and form a homogeneous whole from their junction. Patchwork appears in spite of all the genius and taste of Virgil. Epic poetry, indeed, is not confined within the narrow limits of the Grecian drama ; the poem may embrace a longer period than it requires to read it. But in epic poetry, as in all the fine arts, one unity is indispensable — the unity of interest or emotion. Unity of time and place is not to be disregarded to any great degree without manifest danger. The whole period embraced in the Iliad is only forty-eight days, and the interest of the piece — that which elapses from Hector lighting his fires before the Greek intrenchments till his death in front of the Scsean Gate — is only thirty-six hours. Tasso has the same unity of time, place, and interest in his poems : the scene is always around Jerusalem ; the time not many weeks ; the main object, the centre of the whole action, the capture of the city. The episodes of Erminia's flight and Armida's island are felt to be episodes only : they vary the nar- rative without distracting the interest. But in Virgil the interest is various and complicated, the scene continually shifting, the episodes usurp the place of the main story. At one time we are fascinated by the awful recital of the murder of Priam, the burning of Troy, and the fliglit of ^neas : at 52 YIRGIL, TASSO, AXD RAPHAEL. another, we weep with the sorrows of Dido at Carthage, and the exquisite pathos of her heart-rending lamentations : at a third, we are charmed by the descent into the infernal regions on the shores of Ayernus — we sympathise with tlie patriotic effort of Turnus and the people of Ausonia to expel the invaders from the Italian shores. Though Yirgil did not intend it, he has twice transferred the reader's sympathy from the hero of his story : once by his inimitable description of the mourning and death of Dido from the departure and perfidy of ^neas, and again, from the burst of patriotic feeling which he has represented as animating the Etruscan tribes at the violent intrusion of the Trojan invaders. Virgil's heroes will bear no sort of comparison with those either of the Iliad or the Jerusalem Delivered. ^Eneas himself is a vain conceited man, proud of his piety and his wanderings, and destroying our admiration for either by the ostentation with which he brings them forward on all occasions. The well-known line, " Sum plus ^ueas, fama suj^er sethere notus," * occurs too frequently to render it possible to take any interest in such a self-applauding character. Compare this with the patriotic devotion, the heroic courage, the domestic tenderness, the oblivion of self in Hector, in the Iliad, and it will at once appear how far deeper the insight into the human heart was in the Grecian than the Roman poet. One striking instance will at once illustrate this. When Hector parts from Andromache at the Scsean Gate, and after he has taken his infant son from her arms, he prays to Jupiter that he may become so celebrated that the people in seeing himself pass, may say only — " He far exceeds his father." What a sentiment on the part of a hero himself, and at the moment the bulwark and sole stay of Troy ! But what does Virgil make ^Eneas say in similar circum- stances ? — " Learn, boy, virtue and true labour from me, fortune from others." What a difference between the thought in the two poets, and the interest which their words excite in the breast of the reader ! * " I am the pious ^Enoas, known by fame above the skies." VIRGIL, TASSO, AXD RAPHAEL. 53 What a historical gallery, or rather what a gallery of imaginary portraits, does the Iliad cod tain ! It is the embodying so many separate and well-distinguished charac- ters in different persons which forms the grand character- istic, the unequalled supremacy of the poem. Only think of what they are. Achilles, vehement alike in anger and in grief — wrathful, impetuous, overbearing — " the most terrible character ever conceived by man," yet not insensible at times to the tender emotions; loving his country, weeping for his father, devoted to his home, but yet determined to purchase deathless renown by a short life, ere he met the death he knew awaited him under the walls of Troy. Hector, calm, resolute, patriotic; sustaining by his smgle arm the conflict with a host of heroes; retaining, by his single suavity, the confederacy of many jealous and dis- cordant nations; unconquerable in the field, undaunted in council; ever watching over his country, ever forgetful of himself; overflowing with domestic afi*ection, yet prodigal of self-sacrifice ; singly awaiting, before the Scsean Gate, the approach of Achilles, when his celestial armour shone like the setting sun, and all Troy in terror had sought refuge within the walls; deaf to the wailing even of Andromache and Priam, at the call of patriotic duty ; and when betrayed by Minerva in the last conflict, and deprived of his home, yet drawing his sword to do deeds of which men might speak thereafter! Diomede, unsubdued even amidst the wreck of Grecian fortunes during the absence of Achilles, alone sustaining the war when all around him quailed before the spear of Hector; and resolute to hold his ground with a few followers, even though the whole of the Grecian leaders fled in their ships. Agamemnon, proud, imperious, passionate; doing injustice in anger, yet willing to repair it on reflection ; wresting the blue-eyed maid from Achilles in the first burst of fury, yet publicly acknowledging his fault in the council of the chiefs ; sending embassies, and oflering his own daughter, to obtain a reconciliation with the son of Peleus. Ulysses, wary alike in council and in action; provident in forming designs, intrepid in carrying them into execution ; sparing of the blood of his soldiers, but uncon- querable in the resolution with which they were led; ever counselling prudent measures, but ever ruled by invincible 54 VIRGIL, TASSO, AND KAPHAEL. determination. Ajax, singly resisting the onset of the Trojan multitude; slowly retreating, coTered by his broad shield, midway between the two armies, when all around him fled ; striving with desperate resolution for the body of Patroclus, and covering the retreat of his followers, who dragged along the lifeless hero, when Hector, clad in the shining panoply he had wrested from the Myrmidonian chief, was thunder- ing in close pursuit. What has A^irgil to exhibit as a set- off to this band of heroes — " fortem Gyan, fortemque Cloanthum," — the boyish eagerness of Ascanius, the savage wrath of Turnus when bereaved of his bride ! We seem, in passing from the Iliad to the ^neid, to have fallen, so far as character goes, from a race of giants to a brood of pigmies. Modern partiality cannot claim for Tasso the merit of having conceived a band of heroes whose characters were as strongly marked, or boldly drawn, as those of the Grecian bard; yet may it justly claim for the Italian poet the second honours. Tasso did not draw his characters from nature, like Homer; he lived at a period when the manners of the heroic age had passed away, and the recollections of it were preserved only in the stanzas of poetry and the romances of the Troubadours ; yet did the force of his genius, the elevation of his sentiments, the loftiness of his conceptions, in a great measure supply the defect, and pro- duce a magnificent, and to this day unequalled, picture of the chivalry of modern Europe. Godfrey of Bouillon is the model of a Christian hero whose arm has been devoted to the sacred lance ; antiquity did not, and could not, conceive any such character. Hector is the nearest approach to it ; but the patriotism of the Trojan chief is mingled with his domestic affections : it is for his father, his wife, his child, his hearth, his country, that he fights. In Godfrey, all these affections, warm and ennobling as they are, appear to be obliterated by the perpetual sense of a sacred duty supe- rior to tliem all — by the intensity of the pious fervour which had concentrated all earthly affections. He is the personi- fication of the Church militant combating for its Saviour's cause. Tlie profound feelings, the self-negation, the martyr- like spirit whicli had been nursed for centuries amidst the solitude of the cloister, appears in him brought forth into YIRGIL, TASSO, AND EAPHAEL. 55 action, and producing the most intense enthusiasm, jet regu- lated bj the caution of Ulysses, combined with the foresight of Agamemnon, sustained by the constancy of Ajax. Rinaldo, youtliful, vehement, impassioned, is the ideal of a hero not yet weaned from the passions of the world. Vehement, capricious, and irascible, he disturbs, like Achilles, the council of the chiefs by his wrath, and is seduced by the beauty of Armida to abandon the cause of the Cross ; yet even in her enchanted gardens, and when surrounded by all that can fascinate the imagination and allure the senses, the sparks of a noble nature are not extinct in his breast. He is recalled to his duty by the sight of her warriors ; he flies the arms of the syren, he penetrates with invincible courage the enchanted forest; and when he descends, purified from the stains of the world, from the lofty mountain on whose summit at sunrise he had dedicated himself to God, he is the worthy and invincible champion of the Cross. Not less bold than his youthful rival, not less entlmsiastic in his affections, Tancredi is the victim of a romantic passion. But it is no enchantress for whom he pines, it is no seducing frail one who allures him from the path of duty. Clorinda appears in the Saracen ranks; her arms combat with heroic power for the cause of Mahomet ; the glance which has fascinated the Christian knight came from beneath tlie plumed helmet. Lofty enthusiasm has unstrung his arm, devoted tenderness has subdued his heart, the passion of love in its purest form has fascinated his soul. Yet even this high-toned sentiment can yield to the influences of religion ; and when Tancredi, after the fatal nocturnal conflict in which his sword pierced the bosom of his beloved, is visited by her in his dreams, and assured that she awaits him in Paradise, the soul of the Crusader is aroused within him, and he sets forward with ardent zeal to seek danger and death in the breach of Jeru- salem. It cannot be said that these characters are so natu- ral as those of Homer, at least they are not so similar to what is elsewhere seen in the world, and therefore they will never make the general impression which the heroes of the Iliad have done. But they are more refined, they are more exalted; and if less hke what men are, they are perhaps more like what they ought to be. How is it, then, if Virgil is so inferior to Homer and 56 VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. Tasso in the unity of action, the concentration of interest, and the dehneation of character, that he has acquired his prodigious reputation among men ? How is it that genera- tion after generation has ratified the opinion of Dante, who called him his " Divine Master" — of Petrarch, who spent his life in the study of his works ? How is it that his verses are so engraven in our recollection that they have become, as it were, a second nature to every cultivated mind, and insensibly recur whenever the beauty of poetry is felt, or the charms of nature experienced % Rest assured the judgment of so many ages is right : successive generations and difi'er- ent nations never concur in praising any author, unless his works, in some respects at least, have approached perfection. If we cannot discern the beauties, the conclusion to be drawn is, that our taste is defective, rather than that so many ages and generations have concurred in lavishing their admiration on an unworthy object. Nor is it difficult to see in what the excellence of Virgil consists. We cannot read a page of him without perceiving what has fascinated the world, without concurring in the fascination. It is the ten- derness of his heart, his exquisite pathos, his eye for the beauty of nature, the unrivalled beauty of his language, which have given him immortality, and to the end of time will render the study of his works the most perfect means of refining the taste and inspiring a genuine feeling of poetic beauty. So melodious is the versification, so clehcate the taste, so exquisite the feeling, so refined the sentiment of Virgil, that it may be truly said that he will ever remain the model on which the graces of composition in every future age must be formed. Of him more truly than any human being it may be said, " Nihil quod tetegit non ornavit.'''" The Georgics demonstrate that, in the hands of genius, and under the guidance of taste, the most ordinary occupations of rural life may be treated with delicacy, and rendered prolific of beauty. The dressing of vines, the subduing of the clod by the sturdy heifers, the difiPerent manures for the soil, the sowing of seed, the reaping of harvest, the joys of the vintage, the vehemence of storms, the snows of winter, the heats of summer, the blossoms of spring, the riches of * " Naught has he touched and not adoi-ned." YIKGIL, TASSO, AXD RAPHAEL. 57 autumn, become in his hands prohfic of clescrijDtion and prodigal of beauty. Even the dumb animals are the objects of his tender solicitude. We hear the heifers lowing for their accustomed meal in winter ; we gaze on the sporting of the lambs in spring ; we see the mountain goat sus- pended from the shaggy rock in summer ; w^e sympathise with the provident industry of the bees ; we even feel we have a friend in the little underground nest of the field- mouse. The opening lines of the Eclogues, which every schoolboy knows by heart, give an earnest of the exquisite taste which pervades his writings : — " Tityre, tu patulee recubans sub tegmine fagi, Sylvestrem tenui miisam meditaris avena ; Nos pati'iac fines et dulcia liuquimus aiTa, Nos patriam fugimus : tu, Tityre, lentus in umbra, Formosam resonare doces Amaryllida sylvas." Virgil, it has been said, was so strongly impressed witli tlie inferiority of the ^neid to what he conceived epic poetry should be, that he desired that poem to be thrown into the flames after his death ; yet though deficient in the principal requisites of an epic poem, so far as the structure of the story and the delineation of the characters are concerned, what exquisite beauties does it contain — what an assemblage of lovely images has it brought together — what an irreparable loss would its destruction have been to all future generations of men ! Not all the genius of subsequent ages could have supplied its place. There are beauties in the j^neid, which neither Thomson in descrip- tive, nor Racine in dramatic poetry, have been able to rival. If Homer excels all subsequent writers in conception of character, vigour of imagination, and graphic delineation, Virgil is not less unrivalled in delicacy of sentiment, ten- derness of feeling, and beauty of expression. There are many more striking scenes in the Iliad, more animating events, more aw^ful apparitions ; but in the ^neid, passages of extraordinary beauty are much more numerous. What is present to the imagination when we rise from the former, is the extraordinary series of brilliant or majestic images which it has presented ; wiiat is engraven on the memory when we conclude the latter, is the charminor series of ... beautiful passages which it contains. There are many more 58 YIEGTL, TASSO, AXD EAPHAEL. events to recollect in the Grecian, but more lines to remem- ber in the Roman poet. To the lUad, subsequent ages have turned with one accord for images of heroism, traits of nature, grandeur of character. To the ^neid, subsequent times will ever have recourse for touches of pathos, expres- sions of tenderness, felicity of language. Flaxman drew his conception of heroic sculpture from the heroes of the Iliad : Racine borrowed his heart-rending pathetic from the sorrows of Dido. Homer struck out his conceptions with the bold hand, and in the gigantic proportions, of Michael Angelo's frescoes : Virgil finished his pictures with the exquisite grace of Raphael's iMadonnas. To illustrate the diiferent character of the Roman and Italian poet, we subjoin two passages, perhaps the finest that antiquity and modern times haye produced, descriptive of the most heart-rending scenes of pathos which the human mind can fioure. At trepida et coeptis immanibus efFera Dido, Sanguiueam volvens aciem, maculisque trementes Interfusa genas, et pallida morte futura, luteriora domus irrumpit limina, et altos Consceudit furibunda rogos, ensemque recludit Dai'danium, non hos qusesitum munus iu usus. Hie postquam Iliacas vestes notumque eubile Couspexit, paullum lacrymis et mente morata, Incubuitque toro, dixitque novissima verba : ' Dulces exuviae, dum fata Deusque sinebant ! Accipite hauc animam, meque his exsolvite curis. Yixi, et quern dederat cursum fortuna, peregi : Et nunc magua rnei sub terras ibit imago. Urbem prteclaram statui : mea mcenia vidi : Ulta vii-um, poenas iuimico a fratre reeepi : Felix, heu nimium felix ! si litora tautiim Xunquam Dardanire tetigissent nostra carina.' Dixit : et, os impressa toro, ' Moi'iemur inultse ? Sed moriamur,' ait : ' sic, sic juvat ire sub umbras. Hauriat hunc ocidis ignem crudelis ab alto Dardanus, et nostra? secum ferat omina mortis.' Dixerat : atque illam media inter talia ferro Collapsam aspiciunt comites, ensemque cruore Spumantcm, sparsasque manus." ^neid, iv. 642-665. Then swiftly to the fatal place she passed. And mounts the funeral pile with fm-ious haste, Unsheathes the sword the Trojan left behind, (Xot for so dire an enterprise designed.) But when she viewed the garments loosely spread, Which once he wore, and saw the conscious bed. She paused, and with a sigh the robes embraced; Then on the couch her trembling body cast, Repressed the ready tears, and spoke her last : yiRGIL, TASSO, AND EAPHAEL. 59 ' Dear pledges of my love, while heaven so pleased ! Eeceive a soul of mortal auguish eased ; My fatal course is finished ; and I go, A glorious name, among the ghosts below. A lofty city by my bauds is raised ; Pj'gmalion punished, and my lord appeased. What could my fortune have afforded more. Had the false Trojan never touched my shore ] ' Then kissed the couch. ' And must I die/ she said, ' And unrevenged \ — 'Tis doubly to be dead ! Yet e'en this death with pleasure I receive On any terms — 'tis better than to live. These flames fi-om far may the false Trojan view, These boding omens his base flight pursue ! ' She said, and struck : deep entered in her side The piercing steel, with reeking purple dyed : Clogged in the wound the ciaiel weapon stands ; The spouting blood came streaming on her hands." Drtde>''s Virgil. It is difficult to figure poetry raore beautiful than this ; although Drjden's translation gives no sort of idea of the exquisite pathos of the original. But Tasso has reached a much higher flight in the well-known passage describing the death of Clorinda, which is perhaps the most exquisite gem of modern poetry. *' Ma ecco omai 1' ox'a fatale e giunta, Che '1 viver di Clorinda al suo fin deve. Spinge egli il ferro nel bel sen di punta, Che vi s' immerge, el sangue avido beve ; E la veste, che d' or vago trapunta Le mammelle stringea tenera e leve, L'empie d' un caldo fiume. Elle gia sente Morirsi, e '1 pie le manca egro e languente. " Quel segue la vittoria, e la trafitta Vergine minacciando incalza e preme. Ella mentre cadea, la voce afiBitta Movendo, disse le parole estreme ; Parole ch' a lei novo un spirito ditta, Spui;o di fe, di carita, di speme : Virtu ch' or Dio le infonde ; e se rubella In vita fu, la vuole in morte ancella : " Amico, hai vinto : io ti perdon — perdona Tu ancora, al corpo no, che nulla pave ; Air alma si : deh per lei prega ; e dona Battesmo a me, ch' ogni mia colpa lave. In queste voci languide risuona Un non so che di flebile e soave, Ch' al cor gli serpe, ed ogni sdegno ammorza, E gli occhi a lagrimar gV invoglia e sforza. " Poco quindi lontan nel sen del monte Scaturia mormorando un picciol rio ; Egli v' accorse, e 1' elmo empie nel fonte, E torno mesto al gi-ande ufiicio e pio. Tremar senti la man, mentre la fronte Xon conosciuta ancor sciolse e scoprio. 60 YIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. La vide, e la couobbe ; e resto senza E voce e moto. Ahi vista ! ahi conoscenza ! " Non mori gia ; che sue vii-tuti accolse Tutte in quel puuto, e in guardia al cor le mise ; E premendo il suo aifauno, a dai' si volse Vita con 1' acqua a clii col ferro uccise. Mentre egli il suou de' sacri detti sciolse, Colei di gioja trasmutossi, e rise : E in atto di morir lieto e vivace, Dir parea : s' apre il Cielo ; io vado in pace. " D' un bel pallore ha il bianco volto asperso, Come a gigli sarian miste viole ; E gli occhi al cielo affisa, e in lei converse Sembra per la pietate il cielo e '1 sole ; E la man nuda e fredda alzando verso II cavaliero, in vece di parole, Gli da pegno di pace. In questa forma Passa la bella donna, e par che dorma." Gerus. Lib. xii. 64-69. But now, alas ! tlie fatal hour arrives, That her sweet life must leave that tender hold ; His sword into her bosom deep he drives, And bathed in lukewaiTa blood his iron cold ; Between her breasts the cruel weapon rives Her curious square, embossed with swelling gold ; Her knees grow weak, the pains of death she feels, And like a falling cedar bends and reels. The Prince his hand upon her shield doth sti-etch, And low on earth the wounded damsel laith ; And while she fell, with weak and woful speech, Her prayers last and last complaints she saith. A spirit new did her those prayers teach. Spirit of hope, of charity, and faith ; And though her life to Christ rebellious were, Yet died she his child and handmaid dear. ' Friend, thou hast won I I pardon thee, nor save This body, that all toi'ments can endure : But save my soul : baptism I dying crave. Come, wash away my sins with water piu'e.' His heart relenting nigh in sunder rave. With woful speech of that sweet creature. So that his rage, his wrath, and anger died. And on his cheeks salt tears for ruth down slide. With murmur loud, down from the mountain side A little runnel tumbled near the place ; Thither he ran, and filled his helmet wide, And quick returned to do that work of grace. With trembling hands her beaver he untied, Which done, he saw, and seeing, knew her face : And lost then with his speech and moving quite : woful knowledge ! ah imhappy sight ! He died not, but all his strength unites. And to his virtues gave his heart in guard ; Bridling his grief, with water he requites The life that he bereft with iron hard : VIEGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. 61 And while the sacred words the kaight recites, The nymph to heaven with joy herself prepared ; And as her life decays her joys increase ; She smiled, and said, ' Farewell, I die in peace.' " As violets blue 'mongst lilies pure men throw, So paleness midst her native white begun. Her looks to heaven she cast : their ejes, I trow, DowTiward for pity bent both heaven and sun. Her naked hand she gave the knight, in show Of love and peace ; her speech, alas ! was done : And thus the virgin fell on endless sleep. Love, Beauty, Virtue, for your darling weep." Fairfax's Tasso. It is impossible to conceive more exquisite passages than these — the very flower of ancient and modern poetry. Nothing can exceed the pathos and tenderness of Virgifs description ; but how superior are the sentiments with which the Christian poet has clothed the dying moments of his heroine, to the utmost beauty which heathen imagination could conceive 1 Virgil is the most charming descriptive poet of antiquity ; but he has been exceeded in that which may be called his peculiar field by his successors in modern times. We select two of the finest descriptive passages, one from Virgil, and oue from Thomson, to illustrate this observation. " Est in secessu longo locus : insula portum Efficit objectu laterum, quibus omnis ab alto Fraugitur, inque sinus scindit sese unda reductos. Hinc atque hinc vastfe rupes, geminique minantur, In coelum scopuli : qviorum sub vertice late JEqaovsL tuta silent : turn sylvis scena coruscis Desuper, horrentique ati'um nemus imminet umbr&. Fronte sub adversa scopulis pendentibus antrum : Intus aquse dulces, vivoque sedilia saxo ; Nympharum domus. Hie fessas non vincula naves Ulla tenent : unco non alligat anchora niorsu." jEneid, i. 160. " Within a long recess there lies a bay : An island shades it from the rolhng sea, And forms a port secure for ships to ride : Broke by the jutting land on either side, In double streams the briny waters glide. Betwixt two rows of rocks, a sylvan scene Appears above, and groves for ever green : A grot is formed beneath, with mossy seats To rest the Xei^eids, and exclude the heats. Down through the crannies of the living walls The crystal streams descend in murmuring falls. No hawsers need to bmd the vessels here, Nor bearded anchors." Dryden's Tirgll 62 YIEGIL, TASSO, A:ND RAPHAEL. Yirgil's description is very beautiful, though Dryden's translation mes, but a feeble idea of it. But how inferior o it is to Thomson's description of sunrise in summer ! " But 5'onder comes the powerful king of day, Rejoicing in the east. The lessening cloud, The kindling azure, and the mountain brow. Illumed with fluid gold, his near approach Betoken glad. Lo ! now apparent, all Aslant the dew-bright earth and coloured air, He looks in boundless majesty abroad, And sheds the shining day, that burnished plays On rocks, and hills, and towers, and wandering streams. High gleaming from afar." Thomson's Seasons. Virgil has been generally considered as unrivalled in the pathetic ; but this observation requires to be taken with a certain limitation. No man ever exceeded Homer in the delineations of suffering, so far as he wished to portray it ; but it was one branch only of that emotion that he cared to paint. It was the domestic pathetic that he delineated vrith such power : it was in the distresses of home life, the rending asunder of home affections, that he was so great a master. The grief of Andromache on the death of Hector, and the future fate of his son begging his bread from the cold charity of strangers — the wailings of Priam and Hecuba, when that noble chief awaited before the Scaean Gate the approach of Achilles — the passionate lamenta- tion of the Grecian chief over the dead body of Patroclus — never were surpassed in any language ; they abound with traits of nature which, to the end of the world, will fascinate and melt the human heart. The tender melancholy of Evander for the fate of Pallas, who had perished by the spear of Turnus, is of the same description, and will bear a comparison with its touching predecessor. But these are all the sorrows of domestic life. Virgil and Tasso, in the description of the despair consequent on the severing of the ties of the passion of love, have opened a new field, unknown in the previous poetry of antiquity. It is to be found touched on in the tragedies of Sophocles and Euripides, and but touched on. The passion they represent under the name of love was not what we understand by the word, or what constitutes so important an element in the poetry and romance of modern Europe, It was not the imaginative flame feeding on hope, nursed by smiles, YIEGEL, TASSO, AXD EAPHAEL. 63 transcendant in enjoyment, but a furious mania, resembling rather, and classed by tliem with, tlie ravings of insanity. It was the passion, not the sentiment, which they felt and painted. Destiny was the grand ruling power in Greek tragedy : the distress brought out was the striving of man against the iron chain of fate. Lore as a passion, indepen- dent of destiny, detached from sense, feeding on imagination, living in the presence of the beloved object, is glanced at in Catullus ; but it is in Virgil that we must look for the perfect delineation of its suffering, a thorough knowledge of its nature — in Tasso, that it has been brought up to the highest conceivable perfection. But, for all that, we will not have old Homer defrauded of his dues. The Iliad cannot, for the reasons already mentioned, produce passages to be placed beside the pathetic tenderness of Dido's love for ^Eneas, the romantic chivalry of Tancredi, or the self-forge tfuln ess of Erminia's passion. But in the earlier and more natural affections, in the deli- neation of domestic grief, in the rending asunder the parental or filial ties, who has ever surpassed the pathetic simplicity of the Grecian bard '? Where can we find such heart-rending words as Priam addresses to Hector, leaning over the towers of Troy, when his heroic son was calmly awaiting the approach of the godlike Achilles, resplendent in the panoply of Vulcan, and shielded by the ^gis of Minerva I But we know not whether three lines in the Odyssey do not convey a still more touching picture of grief — so power- ful is the wail of untaught nature. When Proteus informed Menelaus of the murder of Agamemnon, his grief is thus described — "*Qff €(f)aT^' avrap efjLOLye KareKkaaOrj (JiiXov fjrop KXaiov 6' €V ylra[xddoitTt, Ka6r]p.evos' ovde vv [xol Krjp "HdeX' €Ti ^coeti^, Koi opav i^dos rjeXioio.''' Odyssey, iv. 538. " Thus he spoke. My soul was crushed within me ; I sat w^eeping on the sand ; nor had I the heart to wish to live, and behold the light of the sun."' Here is the pathos of nature : " Rachel weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not." One peculiar beauty belongs to the epic poems of anti- 64 VIRGIL, TASSO, AXD RAPHAEL. quit J, and especially to Homer, from the combination of heroic sentiments and actions with a simplicity which will be looked for in vain, and in truth would be unseemly, in the later ages of society. We hear of princes, kings, and the daughters of kings, and our imagination immediately clothes them with the pomp and circumstance of modern royalty. But ere long some Httle circumstance, let out as it were accidentally, brings us back at once to the simplicity and habits of early life. Bellerophon met the daughter of a king amidst the grassy meads, and a race of heroes sprung from this occasion ; but he met her as lie was tending his herds, and she her lambs. The beauteous daughters of the Trojan chiefs repaired to the hot and cold springs of the Scamander, near the Sceean Gate, but they went there to wash their clothes in its limpid fountains. The youngest daughter of Nestor, with the innocence of a child, though in the beauty of womanhood, did, by her father's desire, to Telemachus the duties of the bath. Many a chief is described as rich ; but generally the riches consist in flocks and herds, in wrought brass or golden ornaments — not unfrequently in meadows and garden-stuff's. This beauty could not, from the superior age of the world, belong to Tasso. His soldans are arrayed in the pomp of Asiatic magnificence — his princes appear in the pride of feudal power — his princesses are surrounded with the homage of chivalrous devotion. Virgil has often the same exquisite traits of nature, the same refreshing return to the young world, in the JEneid: he dwells on tliose peeps into pastoral simplicity as Tacitus did on the virtue of the Germans in the corrupted days of Roman society, when "corrumpere et corrumpi seculum vocatur.'''"" We may conceive the enchantment with which the Romans, when the Capitol was in all its splendour in the time of Augustus, read his charming description of its shaggy precipices in the days of Evander. " Hinc ad Tarpeiam sedem et Capitolia ducit, Aurea nunc, olim sj'lvestribus horrida dumis. Jam turn religio pavidos terrebat agrestes Dira loci ; jam tum sylvam saxumque tremebant. ' Hoc nemus, hune,' inquit, ' froudoso vertice collem, Quis deus incertum est, habitat deus : Ai'cades ipsuni Credunt se vidisse Jovem, cum sa^pe nigrantem ^gida concuteret dextra niml)osque cieret.' * " When to corrupt and be corniptcd was styled the manners of the age." YIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. Q5 Talibus inter se dictis, ad tecta subibant Pauperis Evandri, passimque armenta videbaut Romanoque foro et lautis raugire Carinis." — jEneid, viii. 347. " Thence to the steep Tarpeian rock he leads, Now roofed with gold, then thatched with homely reeds ; A reverend fear (such superstition reigns Among the rude) even then possessed the swains. Some god they knew— what god they could not tell — Did there amid the sacred horror dwell. The Arcadians thought him Jove, and said they saw The mighty Thunderer, with majestic awe, Who shook his shield, and dealt his bolts aroiind. And scattered tempests on the teeming ground. Discoursing thus together, they resort "NMiere poor Evander keeps his country court ; They viewed the ground of Rome's litigious hall. Once oxen lowed where now the lawyers bawl." — Detden's Virgil, viii. 387. What Homer was to Virgil, and Ariosto to Tasso, that Michael Angelo was to Raphael. Though both these illustrious men lived in the same age, jet the former was born nine years before the latter,* and he had attained to eminence while his younger rival was yet toiling in the obscurity of humble life. But it was his works which roused the genius of his immortal successor. It was the sight of the magnificent frescoes of Michael Angelo that first eman- cipated Raphael from the stiff and formal, though beautiful style of his master, Pietro Perugino, and showed him of what his noble art was susceptible. So great was the genius, so ardent the effort of the young aspirant, so rapid the progress of art in those days, when the genius of modern Europe, locked up during the long frost of the Middle Ages, burst forth with the vigour and beauty of a Canadian spring, that he had brought painting, which he had taken up in a state of infancy in the studio of Pietro Perugino, to its very highest point when he died, at the age of thirty-seven. Seventeen years, in Raphael's hands, sufficed to bring an art as great and difficult as poetry to absolute perfection ! Subsequent ages, vainly as yet attempting to imitate, can never hope to surpass him. How vast must have been the genius, how capacious the thought, how intense the labour, of the man who could thus master and bring to its greatest * Raphael was born in 1483, Michael Angelo in 1474. VOL. in. E 66 VIRGIL, TASSO, AXD EAPHAEL. beauty this difficult art, in a period so short as, to raen even of superior parts and unwearied application, barely to gain the command of the pencil ! IModern painting, as it appears in the works of ^lichael Angelo, Raphael, and Titian, is an art as elevated in kind as the highest flights of the epic or tragic muse, and it has been brought to a perfection to be paralleled only by the gi'eatest conceptions of Grecian statuary. If called upon to assign the arts which human genius had, since the beginning of the world, brought to absolute perfection, no one would hesitate to fix on Grecian sculpture and Italian painting. Imagination can conceive a more faultless poem tlian the Iliad, a more dignified series of characters than those of the j^Jieid, a more interesting epic than Pai^adise Lost ; but it can figure nothing more perfect than the friezes of Phidias, or more heavenly than the Holy Families of Raphael. It is one of the most extraordinary and inexpli- cable facts recorded in the history of the human mind, that these two sister arts should both have been brought to per- fection near each other, on the shores of the Mediterranean, in the lifetime of a single generation ; for the transition from the marbles of ^gina to those of the Parthenon, executed in the lifetime of Pericles, is as great as from the paintings of Pietro Perugino to those of Raphael, made in the life- time of Leo X. The sculpture of antiquity aimed chiefly, if not entirely, at the representation of a single figure. Even the procession on the frieze of the Parthenon is not sculpture : it is a series of isolated horsemen or figures passing. The group of Niobe and her children is the only attempt extant at telling a story, or representing emotion, by a variety of figures. Within this limited range, the great sculptors carried the art to the highest imaginable perfection. The Apollo is the most perfect representation of manly beauty, the Venus of feminine grace and delicacy, that ever yet w^as conceived by the human mind. The Laocoon exhibits the most fearful contortions and agonised expressions of pain and anguish in suff'ering humanity ; the Fightiug Gladiator, the most ini- mitable representation of warlike energy at its extreme tension — tlie Dying Warrior of the Capitol, of valour sink- ino[ beneath the ebbinir stream of blood. The Hercules VIRGIL, TASSO, AXD RAPHAEL. 67 Farnese is the perfection of physical strength ; the Jupiter Tonans of awful majesty, the Venus Calipyge of alluring beauty. Thus the expression of character was their great object ; emotion was not overlooked, but it was studied only as it brought out or illustrated the permanent temper of mind. A collection of ancient statues is a vast imaginary gallery, in which, as in the heroes of the Iliad, every con- ceivable gradation of the human mind is exhibited, from the stern vengeance of Achilles, whom not even the massacre of half the Grecian host could melt, to the tender heart of Andromache, who wept her husband's valour, and her sad presentiments for her infant son. In modern painting, as it appeared in the hands of Raphael and Michael Angelo, a wider range was attempted : more spiritual and touching objects had come to engross the human mind. The mere contemplation of abstract character — its delineation by the graphic representation of the human form, had ceased to be the principal object of genius. The temple of the unknown God was no longer to be filled with idols made under the image of man. The Gospel had been preached to the poor ; the words of mercy and peace had been heard on the earth. Painting had come to be the auxiliary of religion ; it was in the churches of a spiritual and suffering faith that its impression was to be produced. Calvary was to be presented to the eye ; the feeling of the cen- turion, " Truly this man was the Son of God," to be engraven on the heart. It was to the faithful who were penetrated with the glad words of salvation, that the altar-pieces were addressed ; it was the feeling of the song of Simeon that had gone forth on the earth. Above all, the love of Heaven, first revealed in the Gospel, was to be portrayed in the image which our Saviour himself had selected for its representation, the tenderness of a mother for her offspring. The images of the Good Shepherd, the Innocent Lamb, the Immaculate Mother, the Divine Infant, the adoring St John, were, by the very events recorded in the Gospels, of necessity intro- duced into Scripture paintings. It was those divine feelings which painting, as it arose in modern Europe, was called to embody in tlie human form ; it was to this heavenly mission that the genius of Italy was called. And if ever there was a mind fitted to answer such a call — if ever the spirit of the 68 YIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. Gospel was breathed into the human breast, that mind and that breast were those of Raphael. ^lichael Angelo was the personification of the genius of Dante. The bold conceptions, the awful agonies, the enduring sufferino- which are brouojht forth in that immortal poet, had penetrated his kindred spirit, and realised the Inferno in the representation of the Last Judgment. But it was the Spirit of Clirist which had been breathed into the heart of Raphael. The divine words, " Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of sucli is the kingdom of heaven," had inspired his immortal con- ceptions. It is neither physical beauty nor mental character, as in the Greek sculpture, which is represented in his paint- ings. It is the Divine Spirit breathed into the human heart, it is the incarnation of deity in tlie human form, that formed the object of his pencil. He has succeeded in the attempt beyond any other human being that ever existed. If any works of man ever deserved the name of divine, they are the Holy Families of Raphael. Superficial writers will ask, what has Raphael to do with Virgil ? Mere artists will inquire how they are to be benefited by the study of Tasso '? Those, again, who have reflected on the means by which the higher stages in any art are attained, will acknowledge that, at a certain elevation, their principles are the same. To move the heart, whether by painting, poetry, or eloquence, requires the same mind. The means by which the effect is to be produced are not different. The one works, indeed, with the pencil, the other with the pen ; the one composes in verse, the other in prose — but what then '? These are the means to the end ; they are not the end itself. There are many avenues to the human heart, but the inner doors in them all are to be opened only by one key, and that key is never denied to the suit of genius, and never to be attained but through its fervent petitions. It is in his lesser pieces that the exquisite taste and divine conceptions of Raphael are chiefly to be seen. His greater paintings, the Transfiguration, the frescoes in the Vatican, the cartoons, are invaluable to the artist as studies, and specimens of the utmost power of drawing and energy of conception ; but it is not there that the VIRGIL, TASSO, ASB RAPHAEL. 69 divine Raphael appears. In the larger ones his object was to cover space and display talent ; and in the prose- cution of these objects he never has been exceeded ; but it is in his groups of two or three figures that his most per- fect ideas were realised. It is there that he has given fi-ee scope to his exquisite conception, intended to represent in the maternal, and therefore universally felt affection, the divine spirit and parental tenderness of the Gospel. " My son, give me thy heart," was what he always aimed at ; " God is love," the idea which he ever strove to repre- sent, as embodying the essence of the Christian faith. The Madonna della Seggiola at Florence, the Assumption of the Virgin at Dresden, the jNladonna cli Foligno in the Vatican, the Holy Family at Naples, St John in the Desert in the Tribune at Florence, the small Holy Family in the Louvre, the large Holy Family, with the flowers, brought from Fontainebleau, also in the Louvre, St Mark at Munich, and several of the lesser pieces of Raphael in the same rich collection in that city, are so many gems of art, embodying this conception, which to the end of the world, even when preserved only in the shadowy imitation of engraving, will improve the heart and refine the mind, as well as fascinate the imagination. It may be doubted if they ever will be equalled : excelled they can never be. Whoever wiU study those inimitable productions, even when standing to gaze at the engravings from them in a print-shop window, will have no difficulty in feeling the justice of Cicero's remark, that all the arts which relate to humanity have a certain common bond, a species of con- sanguinity between them. The emotion produced by the highest excellence in them all is the same. So intense is this emotion, so burning the dehght which it occasions, that it cannot be borne for any length of time : the mind's eye is averted from it as the eyeball is from the line of " insufirerable brightness," as Gray calls it, which often pre- cedes the setting of the sun ; or the gaze of love, which even love itself cannot long endure. It is difficult to say in wliat this burning charm consists. Like genius or beauty, its presence is felt by all, but can be described by none. It would seem to be an emanation of heaven ; a chink, as it were, opened, which lets us feel for a few seconds the ethe- 70 VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. real jojs of a superior state of existeuce. But it is need- less to seek to define what all wlio have felt it must acknowledge passes all understanding. It is a remarkable circumstance, indicative of the ethereal nature of the sentiment of love as depicted in the Poetry and Romances of modern times, that no attempt ever has been made to delineate it on canvass. The love of Heaven has been painted with divine tenderness by Raphael; the love of Earth, the allurements to the senses, with surpassing skill by Titian, Correggio, and the Caraccis. We have reclining Venuses, nymphs bathing, and seducing damsels enough, represented in painting, as well as Holy Families and infant Innocences ; but neither Painting nor Statuary has ever thought of portraying on the canvass or marble the passion of Dido for ^Eneas, of Tancred for Clorinda, of Desdemona for Othello. The exquisite scene of the death of Clorinda, already given, has never yet been selected as the subject of painting. It would appear that that senti- ment which so entirely subdues self, and eradicates, as it were, eYerj feeling but the generous ones from the human breast, dwells too exclusively in the inmost recesses of the heart to be capable of representation in the external form. Like Heroism, Generosity, or Magnanimity, its existence maybe learned from the actions; but its presence cannot be evinced from the expression. The reason is, that this refined feeling is found in so few breasts that no known symptoms of it could be recognised in the human countenance or form. It is a common saying, even among persons of cultiva- ted taste, that it is hopeless to attempt to advance any- thing new on the beauties of ancient authors ; that every- thing that can be said on the subject has already been exhausted ; and that it is in the more recent fields of modern literature that it is alone possible to avoid repetition. We are decidedly of opinion that this idea is erroneous, and that its diffusion has done more than anything else to degrade criticism to the low station which, with some honourable exceptions, it has so long held in the world of letters. It is the diversity of mind which is the real cause of mediocrity in observation : when the critic is obviously inferior to his author, he becomes ridiculous. But when VIEGIL, TASSO, AKD RAPHAEL. 71 ancient excellence is contemplated with a generous eye, even when the mind that sees it is but slenderly gifted, who will say that nothing new will occur ? When it meets kin- dred genius, when it is elevated by a congenial spirit, what a noble art does criticism become ! What has it proved in the hands of Dryden and Pope, of Wilson and Macaulay ! It is in the contemplation of ancient greatness, and its com- parison with the parallel efforts of modern genius, that the highest flights of these gifted spirits have been attained, and the native generosity of real intellectual power most strikingly evinced. Criticism of words will soon come to an end ; the notes of scholiasts and annotators are easily made, as apothecaries make drugs by pouring from one phial into another. But criticism of things, of ideas, of cha- racters, of conceptions, can never come to an end; for every successive age is bringing forth fresh comparisons to make, and fresh combinations to exhibit. It is the outpouring of a heart overburdened with admiration which must be delivered, and will ever discover a new mode of deliver- ance. How many subjects of critical comparison in this view, hitherto nearly untouched upon, has the literature of Europe, and even of this age, afforded ! ^schylus, Shakspeare, and Schiller — Euripides, Alfieri, and Corneille — Sophocles, Metastasio, and Racine — Pindar, Horace, and Gray — Ovid, Ariosto, and Wielaud — Lucretius, Darwin, and Campbell - — Demosthenes, Cicero, and Burke — Thucydides, Tacitus, and Gibbon — Thomson, Cowper, and Claude Lorraine : such are a few which suo^o-est themselves at first sio^ht to every one who reflects on the rich retrospect of departed genius. It is like looking back to the Alps through the long and ricli vista of Italian landscape ; the scene conti- nually varies, the features are ever new, the impression is constantly fresh, from the variety of intervening objects, though the glittering pinnacles of the inaccessible mountains ever shine from afar on the azure vault of heaven. Human genius is constantly furnishing new proofs of departed excellence. Human magnanimity is ever exhibiting fresh examples of the fidelity of former descriptions, or the grandeur of former conception. What said Hector, draw- ing his sword, when, betrayed by Minerva in his last 72 VIRGIL, TASSO, AND RAPHAEL. conflict ^4th Acliilles, he found himself without his lance in presence of his fully-armed and heaven-shielded anta- gonist '?— " Not inglorious at least shall I perish, but after doincr some great thing that may be spoken of in ages to come. * '■'• Mt) nav do-TTsSei ye /cat aKketcos dnoKoLixrjv^ 'AXXa utya pefas tl kul eaaoixevmai ivvBeaOai.'' — Jliad, xxii. 304. GUIZOT [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, Dec. 1844] 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 illus- trious 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 Csesar 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 caUed 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 74 GUIZOT. such a general view of the progress of things, but thej did the reverse. Their great object was to bring the eye so close as to see the wliole virtues or vices of the principal figures, Avhich thej exhibited on their moving panorama ; and in so doing, thej 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 charm- ing episodes of individual history, or graphic pictures of par- ticular events with which it abounds; scarcely 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 Catihne nor the Jugurthine AVar 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 increas- ing vices and selfishness of a corrupted age : but, like the maxims of Rochefoucault, it is rather to individual than general humanity that they refer ; and they strike us as so admirably just because they do not descibe 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 ]\Iiddle Ages, on the deluge of barbarism which, under the Goths, flooded the world, on the torpor of the human mind under the com- bined 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 GUIZOT. 75 actiye part in society by the general preyalence of military yiolence, sought, in the soHtucle of the cloister, employment in reflecting on the mind itself, and the general causes ^vhich, under its guidance, operated upon society. The influ- ence of this great change in the direction of thought at once appeared when knowledge, liberated from the monastery and the university, again took its place among the afi'airs of men. Machiayel in Italy and Bacon in England, for the first time in the annals of knowledge, reasoned upon human affairs as a subject of general laws. They spoke of the minds of men as permanently goyerned 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 peruiitted the accumulation of such an increased store of facts, as per- mitted 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 likeli/ to recur from a similar combina- tion of circumstances ; and formed conclusions for the regu- lation 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 to all circumstances of men. In depth of view and justness of observation, these views of the Florentine statesman have never been 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 observa- tion 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 76 GUIZOT. pliilosopliy, 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 foun- dation 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 specula- tions of men of letters and science. The history of France he stimiatised as sayage and worthless till the reio:n of Louis XIV.; the Russians he looked upon as barbarians till the time of Peter the Great. He thought the philoso- phers 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. Rehgion, in his eyes, was a mere priestly delusion to enslave and benight 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 litera- ture, 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 dehneator 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 loug protracted old age, under Constantine and his GUIZOT. 77 successors on the Bjzautine 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, notwithstanding 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 rehgion 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 adoiirable 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 wearying, but without ever discovering the general progress or apparent tendency of human affairs. We look in vain for the profound reflec- tions 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 states- man will often make a better delineator of the progress of human affairs than the philosophic recluse ; for he is more 78 GUIZOT. practically acquainted with their secret springs : it was not in the schools, but in 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 philo- sophic 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 Enorhsh institutions wliich it fell to his lot to recount — aro^uments far abler than were either used bv, or occurred to, the actors by whom tliey 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 brouglit them into the broad light of philo- sophic observation and popular narrative. But, notwith- standing 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 generalisation on the varied theatre of human affairs, and often drew hasty and incorrect con- clusions 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. GUIZOT. 79 The fact is just the reverse, and might easily have been ascertained, even in his time, by a more extended induction. 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, whicli 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 Refor- mation 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 com- merce" 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 afikirs, or, as is more probable, from the system of educa- tion at our universities being so exclusively devoted to the study of words, that our scholars rarely arrive at the know- ledge 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 generalising 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 80 GUIZOT. events, and where his imaginatiye spnit and marked turn for generalisation 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 develop- ment of the plan of Providence in the government of human affairs, during the w^hole 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 under- taking. But the execution has bj 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 eccle- siastical education ; Jerusalem was the centre round which he supposed all other nations revolved. That was no doubt true with reference to the future advent of Christianity ; but it was not the whole truth with reference to human affairs. Many other objects entered into the general plan of Provi- dence for the government of the world. Bossuet's 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 revolu- tions 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 transac- tions 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 GUIZOT. 81 part of the affairs of men are left entirely to their o^n guidance, and that their actions are overruled, not directed, bj Almighty power to work out the purposes of Divine beneficence. That which Bossuet left undone, Robertson did. The first volume of his Chai^les V. may justly be regarded as tlie 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 proc/7'ess 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 presented 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 in its masses ; the general causes wliich 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 civilisation 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 institutions of chivalry — the crusades, and revival of letters following the capture of Constanti- nople by the Turks — the invention of printing, and conse- quent extension of knowledge to the great body of the people — the discovery of the compass, and, with it, of America, by Columbus, and the doubling of the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gam a — 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 discrimi- nation. The vast agency of general causes upon the VOL. III. F 82 GUIZOT. progress of mankind now became apparent : unseen powers, like the deities of Homer in the war of Troy, w ere seen to mingle at every step 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 indi- vidual effort or character. Men and nations seem to be alike borne forward on the surface of a mighty stream, wliich 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,''^ " 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, w^ll convince every candid inquirer, 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 tlie constancy of Pitt, the fore- sight of Burke, the arm of Nelson, the wisdom of Welling- ton, 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 and 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 dehneation of indi- vidual achievement, or the concentration of attention on general causes, but in the union of tlie two in due propor- tions, as they reallj exist in nature, and determine, by their combined operation, the direction of human affairs. The talent now required in the historian partakes, accord- ingly, of this twofold character. He is expected to write * Fergusson. GUIZOT. 83 philosophy and to paint biography ; to unite skill in drawing individual character, the po^yer of describing individual achievements, with a clear perception of general causes, and the generalising 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 a hundred-gun ship. With all his generalising 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 profes- sion. He was not a freethinker — on the contrary, he was a sincere and pious divine ; but he lived in an age of free- thinkers — ^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 the Romish religion. Not that he exac^o:erated the abuses and enormities of the Roman Catliolic 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 benefi- cial efi'ect 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 efi"ected what the wisdom of the learned or the efforts of the active were alike unable to efi'ect ; it restrained by imaginary terrors the violence which 84 GUIZOT. was inaccessible to tlie force of real ones ; 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 bless- ings 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 Sismoudi, Thierry, Michelet, and Guizot, must be aware that the services, not merely of Cliristianity, 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 EepiibUcs in sixteen, and that 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 aJ0fairs. 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 philo- sophical ; 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 efiects. His success in this arduous undertaking GUIZOT. 85 has been great indeed. He has completed the picture of which Robertson had only formed the sketch — and com- pleted 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 thej are great, and with this rare combination of antiquarian industry with philosophic generalisation, 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 abridgment was tried of Gibbon ; but it had little success, and has never since been attempted. You might as well publish an abridgment of Waverlej or Ivan- hoe. Every reader of the Decline and Fall must feel that condensation is impossible, without an omission of interest or a curtailment of beauty. But it is otherwise with Sis- mondi. With all his admirable qualities as a general and philosophic historian, he wants the one thing needful in exciting interest — descriptive and dramatic power. He was a man of great vigour of thought and clearness of observa- tion, 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 scarcely any attempt to make his narrative interest- ing ; 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 historian's oivn ivorcls, 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 imamnation, as in a tragedy, a painting, or an epic poem. 86 GUIZOT. But, in addition to this, Sismondi's general views, thongh 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 educa- tion ; 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 irrevo- cably 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 prox- imity, 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 annahst of the countries of Tasso and Dante, of Titian and Machiavel, of Petrarch and Leonardo da Yinci, of Galileo and Michael Angelo, should conceive, that in no other state of society is such scope aftorded for mental cultivation and the development of the highest eflbrts of ^reuius. Still less is it surprising, that tlie historian of the crusade against the Albigenses, of the unheard-of atrocities of Simon de Mont- fort, of the wholesale massacres, burnings, and torturings, which have brought indelible disgrace on the Romish priest- hood, should feel deeply interested in a faith which has extricated his own country from such atrocious persecu- tion. But still, this indulgence of these natural, and in some respects praiseworthy feelings, has blinded Sisinondi to GUIZOT. 87 tlie insurmountable evils of a confederacj 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 its infamous cruelties began, when its warfare was only with the oppressor, its 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 Robert- son, nor the learned research and philosophic mind of Sis- mondi could reach, have been brought forward by a writer of surpassing ability, whose fame as a historian and a philo- sopher 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 -siglited and rebellious generation, clamouring, as the Romans of old, for the ??n////5 utile helium, he has sustained his sovereign's wise and mag- nanimous 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 civilised world liave good cause to thank M. Guizot for saving it from a contest as vehement, as peiilous, 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, how- 88 GUIZOT. ever, in what bis greatness consists, lest the readers, expect- ing what they will not find, experience disappointment when they begin the study of bis works. He is neither imagina- tive nor pictorial ; be 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 achieve- ment. 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 whither he is going, that his greatness consists ; and in that loftiest of the regions of history he is unrivalled. We know of no author who has traced tlie 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, a 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. Gruizot. 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 feel- ings ; 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 sub- ject 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 with- drawn 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 con- sidered in that view, it is astonishing how much the import- ance of individual agency disappears. Important in their generation — sometimes almost omnipotent for good or for GUIZOT. 89 evil while thej 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 they, 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 w^hich 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 cliaracter 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 the course of human affairs was admirably calcu- lated 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 haA^ng been the editor of a valuable col- lection of iMemoirs 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 revolu- tion. This history is clear, lucid, and valuable ; but it is written with little eloquence, and has met with no great suc- cess : the author's powers were 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 VHistoire de France, each in 90 GUIZOT. one volume, are the fruits of these professional labours. The same profound thought, sagacious discrimination, and lucid view, are conspicuous in them all ; but thej 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 saj, 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 exis- tence ; 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 contempo- rary 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 histo- torians 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 1 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 tliem the easy prey of those whom they had so often subdued 1 The ancient writers content themselves with savin2:, that tlie people became corrupted ; that thejlost their military courage ; that the recruiting of the legions, from among the free inha- bitants 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, GUIZOT. 91 and tlie strength of the civilised was overthrown bj the energy of the savage workl. 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 doubt- less pervaded the liigher ranks in Rome from the emperor downward : but these vices are the faults of the exalted and the affluent only ; they never have extended, and never will extend generally to the great body of the community — for this plain reason, that they are not rich enough to pur- chase 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 renowu, though it could not rouse the pacific inhabi- tants 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, tliey 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 each 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 untold. 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 92 GUIZOT. their preservation, modern industry, guided by the hght of philosophy, has reared up the true sokition of tlie 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 Hisfoire des Rois Merovijigiens ; Sismoncli, in the three first volumes of his Histoire des Franfais ; and Guizot, in his Civilisation Europeemie, and the first volumes of his Essais sur V Histoire de France, have applied their great powers to this most interesting subject. It may safely be affirmed, that thay have got, in a great degree at least, to the bottom of the subject, and Hfted 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 orga- nisation 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 fonght— with cities that it contracted treaties— 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 difterently 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 mimicipal 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 depen- dent 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 gov- ernment 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 a centralised despotism not only suc- ceeded in restraining and regulating all the incoherent members of the vast dominion, but the idea of a central irresistible authority insinuated itself GUIZOT. 93 iuto men's minds everywhere, 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. Dur- ing 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 cen- tury 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 sank into the dust, and municipal institutions alone survived the disaster. This, then, w^as 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 organisation everywhere established. But it was not the only legacy. Beside it, there w^as the recollection at least of the awful majesty of the Emperor ; of a distant, unseen, but sacred and iiTesistible power. These are the two ideas which antiquity bequeathed to modern times. On the one hand, the municipal regime^ its rules, customs, and priuciples 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." — Civilisation Europtenne^ 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, to a certain extent, explained by Guizot in his Essays on the History of Frxmce, and have been fully demonstrated by Sismondi, Thierry, and Michelet. They were a natural consequence of the municipal system, then uniyersally established as the very basis of civilisation 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 cer- tain 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. 94 GUIZOT. 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 ^vhen the Empire was beset on all sides with enemies — only the more rapacious and pressing that the midit of the leo^ions had so loner confined them within the comparatively narrow limits of their own sterile terri- tories — 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 dis- aster 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 what these writers have not dwelt on, but which was more powerful than any other cause in producing the ruin of the Roman Empire, the necessary effect which the free circulation of grain, throughout its whole extent, had in depressing the agriculture of Italy, Gaul, and Greece. They were unable to withstand the competition of Egypt, Libya, and Sicily, the storehouses of the world, where the benignity of the climate and the riches of the soil rewarded seventy or a hundredfold the labours of the husbandman. Gaul, where the increase was only sevenfold — Italy, where it seldom exceeded twelve — Spain, where it was never so high, were crushed in the straggle. The mistress of the world, as Tacitus bewails, had come to depend for her sub- sistence 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, or did not exist in its arid provinces; and the race of agriculturists, the strength of the legions, disappeared from the fields, and was GUIZOT. 95 lost in the needy and indolent crowd of urban citizens, in part maintained by tributes in corn brought from Egypt and Libya. 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 equalled the efi*ect 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 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 inha- bitants were in a state of servitude; and as there were 120,000,000 souls under the Roman sway, 60,000,000 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 20,000,000 souls; and the total number of freemen was about double that of the citizens, f In one family alone, in the time of Pliny, there were 4116 slaves. J 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 pliysical * See " The Roman Campagna," in Vol. II., and " The Fall of Rome," in the present volume of this collection, where this subject, scarce noticed by these able writers, but perhaps the most important that can now occupy the attention of all men of thought in the British Empire, is treated of at large. t Gibbon. :J: Pliny, Hist. Nat, xxxiii. 47. 96 GUIZOT. and moral strength of the empire ! Half the people requir- ing food, needing restraint, incapable of trust, and jet adding nothing to the muster-roll of the legions, or the persons bj 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 1 A vast and nnwieldj dominion, exposed on eyery 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 jMediterranean; multitudes of turbulent free- men 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 domnas which have so lono^ 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 pro- vidence, 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 GUIZOT. 97 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 develops 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 presump- tion of reason having directed arrangements w^hich 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 civilisation. 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 civilisation. 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 Ger- many, in the republics of Italy, as well as in simple monarchies. It is a character dift'used through the various elements of modern civilisation, and the perception of which is indispensable to the right understanding of its history." — Lecture iii. 9, 11 ; Civilisaiion 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 privi- leged class have got possession of the power, and they make VOL. in. G ^ 98. GUIZOT. use of it to perpetuate these abuses. Doubtless, tbej 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,'" that if almost all the great con- vulsions 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 di*ead- ful 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 gene- rations, 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 tlie change of manners or of the circumstances of society — that may be a good reason for cautiously modi- fying or altering it — but rely upon it, it was once useful if it has existed long ; and the presumption of present and con- tinuing utility requires to be strongly outweighed by forcible * Mr James's Preface to Mary of Burrjunchj. GUIZOT. 99 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 thej 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 develop- ments 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 effects 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 develop 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 civilisation 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 philoso- phers of the eighteenth century, and which awakened the greatest transports of indignation among the ardent multi- tudes who, at its close, brought about the French Revolu- tion. 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"^ civilisation 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, esta- blished amidst that deluge of physical force and selfish violence which over- whelmed 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 sway. 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 100 GUIZOT. they were brought about; it professed the 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 spiri- tual and temporal power. That separation is the origin of liberty of con- science ; 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, con- viction, 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, Avhich has so slowly triumphed, and often against the utmost eff'orts of the clergy themselves, was first founded by the doctrine of the separation of the temporal and spiritual power, in the cradle of European civilisation. 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 muni- cipal 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 indus- try, no shielding of innocence, could be expected from their exertions. The clergy, again, formed a society within itself — fresh, young, vigorous, shel- tered 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 ; Civilisation Eurupeenne. Nothing cau be more just or important than these obser- vations ; and thej throw a new and consoling hght 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 Refor- mation — Sismondi, with his natural detestation of a faith which had urged on the dreadful cruelties of the crusade of the iVlbigenses, and which produced the revocation of the GUIZOT. 101 Edict of Nautes — 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 Romish clergy had produced innumerable evils in later times ; that their venality in regard to indul- gences 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 Catho- lics 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, for- getting that the eighteenth was not the eighth centmy ; and that, during the dark ages, violence would have rioted with- out control, if, when reason was in abeyance, knowledge scanty, and military strength alone in estimation, supersti- tion had not thrown its unseen fetters over the barbarian's arms. They saw that the Romish clergy, during five cen- turies, 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 bar- barian conquest, men saw only the triumph of chaos. All unity, all general civilisation disappeared ; on all sides society was seen falling to pieces ; 102 GUIZOT. and in its stead arising a multitude of little, obscure, isolated commu- nities. 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. Everything 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 uniyersally 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 yaga- bond 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 civilisation, a preponderating influence ; the government of society passed at once from the towns to the country — private took the lead of public pro- perty — private prevailed over public life. Such was the first effect, and it was an effect purely material, of the establisliment of the feudal system. But otlier effects, of still greater consequence, 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 contri- buted to his defence. Around the castle, in its vicinity, were established the farmers and serfs who cultivated his domain. In the midst of that infe- rior, 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 Chris- tian world. GUIZOT. 103 " 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 per- sonal 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 anything 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 exer- cised 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 Ire- land, 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 van- quished race. Their employments were as various as their feelings and their traditions. The lord lived in his castle, with his wife, his children, and rela- tions ; 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 counter- poise 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, famil}- 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 cour- tesy 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 ; Civilisation Europeenne. 104 GUIZOT. 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 clisce 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. THE ROMANTIC DRAMA [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, Aug. 1846] Macaulay sajs that the object of the drama is the paint- ing of the human heart ; and, as that is portrayed by the events of a whole life, he concludes that it is by poets repre- senting in a short space a long series of actions, that the end of dramatic composition is most likely to be attained. " The mixture," says he, " of tragedy and comedy, and the length and extent of the action, which the French consider as defects, is the chief cause of the excellence of our older dramatists. The former is necessary to render the drama a just representation of the world, in which the laughers and the weepers are perpetually jostling each other, in which every event has its serious and ludicrous side. The latter enables us to form an intimate acquaintance with characters with which we could not possibly become familiar during the few hours to which the unities restrict the poet. In this respect, the works of Shakspeare in particular are miracles of art. In a piece which may be read aloud in three hours, we see a character gradually unfold all its recesses to us. We see it change with the change of circumstances. The petu- lant youth rises into the politic and warhke sovereign. The profuse and courteous philanthropist sours at length into a hater and scorner of his kind. The tyrant is altered, by the chastening of affliction, into a pensive moralist. The veteran general, distinguished by coolness, sagacity, and self-command, sinks under a conflict between love strong as death, and jealousy cruel as the grave. The brave and loyal subject passes step by step to the excesses of human depravity. We trace his progress step by step, from the first dawnings of unlawful ambition, to the cynical melan- 106 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. cliolj of his impeniteut remorse. Yet in these pieces there are no unnatural trausitious. Nothing is omitted; nothing is crowded. Great as are the changes, narrow as is the compass within which thej are exhibited, thej shock us as little as the gradual alterations of those familiar faces which we see every evening and morning. The magical skill of the poet resembles that of the dervise in the Spectator, who condensecl all the events of seven years into the single moment durin^ which the kino^ held his head under water.'' '" In this admirable passage, the principle on which the romantic drama rests is clearly and manfully stated ; and it is on the possibility of effecting the object which is here so well described, that the whole question between it and the Greek unities depends. As we have decidedly embraced the opposite opinion, and regard, after much consideration, the adiierence to the variety and license of the romantic drama as the main cause of the present degraded condition of our national theatre, we have prefaced our observations with a defence of the romantic drama by its ablest advocate, and shall now state the reasons which appear to us to be conclusive in favour of a different opinion. The drama is part, and but a part, of the great effort of mankind for the representation of human character, passion, and event. Other sister arts — history, the historical romance, the epic poem — also aim in some degree, by different methods, at the same object; and it is by considering their different principles and necessary limitations, that the real rules of the drama will best be understood. History, as all the world knows, embraces the widest range of human events. Confined to no time, restricted to no locality, it professes, in a comparatively short space, to portray the most extensive and important of human trans- actions. Centuries, even thousands of years, are sometimes, by its greatest masters, embraced within its mighty arms. The majestic series of Roman victories may occupy the genius of one writer: the fifteen centuries of its decline and fall be spanned by the powers of another. The vast annals of Mahommedan conquest, the long sway of the Papal dominion, present yet untrodden fields to future historical * Macaulay's Miscellaneous Essays. Article Dryden. THE EOMANTIC DEAMA. 107 effort.* But it is this yerj greatness and magnitude of his subject which presents the chief difficulty with which the historian has to contend. Witli the exception of a very few instances, such lengthened annals are necessarily occupied by a vast variety of characters, actions, states, and events, having little or no connexion with each other, scarcely any common object of union, and no thread by which the interest of the reader is to be kept up throughout. Thence it is that works of history are so generally complained of as dull ; that, though they are more numerous than any other class of literary compositions, the numbers of them which are generally read is so extremely small. Enter any public library, you will see tens of thousands of historical works reposing in respectable dignity on the shelves. How many of them are generally studied, or have taken root by com- mon consent in the minds of men ? Not ten. Romance numbers its readers by hundreds, poetry by fifties, where history can with difficulty master one. This amazing differ- ence is not owing to any deficiency of ability turned to the subject, or interest in the materials of which it is formed. It can never be supposed that men will be indifferent to the annals of their own fame, or that the groundwork of all human invention — real event — can be wanting in the means of moving the heart. It is the extraordinary difficulty of this branch of composition, owing to its magnitude and com- plication, which is the sole cause of the difference. The world will, perhaps, see another Homer before another Tacitus; a second Dante before a second Gibbon. The Historical Romais^ce is founded on history, but it differs from it in the most essential particulars, and is relieved from the principal difficulties with which the annalist of actual occurrences has to contend. It selects a particular period out of past time, and introduces the cha- racters and events most remarkable for their interest, or the deep impress they have left on the minds of men. This is an immense advantage ; for it relieves the writer from the great difficulty with which the general historian has to con- tend, and which, in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred, * Ranke's History of the Popes is a most valuable addition to historical know- ledge; but no one will assign it a place beside Livy or Gibbon. The difference between the work itself, and Macaulay's essay upon it, sufficiently proves what a vast addition genius may yet make to the labours of the Gei'man annalist. 108 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. proves fatal to his success. Unity in the midst of confusion is given to his subject. Room is afforded for graphic paint- ing, space for forcible delineations of character. It becomes possible to awaken interest, by following out the steps of individual adventure. Though the name of historical romance is not to be found in antiquity, the thing itself was far from being unknown. Its most charming biographies are little better than historical romances; at least they possess their charm, because they exhibit their unity. The CyropcBclia of Xenophon, the Lives of Plutarch, many of the heart-stirring Legends of Livy, of the profound Sketches of the Emperors in Tacitus, are in truth historical romances under the name of histories or biography. The lives of eminent men owe their chief charm to the unity of the sub- ject, and the possibility of strongly exciting the feelings, by strictly adhering to the delineation of individual achieve- ment. So great is the weight of the load, crushing to the historian, which is thus taken from the biographer or writer of historical romance, that second-rate genius can effect triumphs in that department, to which the very highest mind alone is equal in general historical composition. No one would think of comparing the intellect of Plutarch with that of Tacitus ; but, nevertheless, the Lives of the former will, to the end of the world, prove more generally attrac- tive than the Annals of the latter. Bos well's mind was immeasurably inferior to that of Hume ; but for one reader of the History of England, will be found ten of the Life of Johnson. Sir Walter Scott's Life of Napoleon does not prove that he was qualified to take a place among the great English historians; but, to the end of the world, Richard Coeur-de-Lion, Queen Mary, and Elizabeth will stand forth from his canvass more clearly than either from the rlietoric of Hume or the eloquence of Robertson. The Epic Poem confines within still narrower limits the narration of human events. As it borrows the language and is clothed with the colours of poetry, so it is capable of rousing the feelings more powerfully than either biogra- phy or romance, and, when crowned with success, attains a fame and takes a hold of the hearts of men to which nothing in prose composition can be compared. Elevation of thouglit, fervour of language, powerful delineation of character, are THE ROMAXTIC DRAMA. 109 its essential qualities. But all these would prove unavailing if the one thing needful, unity of subject, is awanting. It is that which is its essential quality, for it alone lets in all the others. All the great Epic poems which have appeared in the world are not only devoted to one interest, but are generally restricted, in point of space and time, within limits not materially wider than those of the Greek drama. The Iliad not only relates exclusively the latter stages of the siege of Troy, but the whole period of its action is forty- eight days — of its absorbing interest, (the time from the storming of the Greek lines by Hector to his death by the heaven-defended Achilles,) thirty-six hours. The Paradise Lost adheres strictly to unity both of subject and time : the previous battles of the angels is the subject of narrative by the angel Raphael ; but the time that elapsed from the convocation of the devils in Pandemonium to the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise is only three days. Tlie Jerusalem Delivered has the one absorbinoj interest arising from the efforts of the Christians for the deliverance of the Holy Sepulchre ; and its time is limited to a few weeks. Virgil was so enamoured of his great predecessor that he endeavoured to imitate, in one poem, both his great works. The JEneid is an Iliad and Odyssey in one. But every one must feel that it is on the episode with Dido that the interest of the poem really rests ; and that all the magic of his exquisite pencil can scarcely sustain the interest after the pious ^neas has taken his departure from the shores of Carthage. The Lusiad of Camoens, in which the perilous voyage of Vasco di Gama is narrated, necessarily from its subject embraced wider limits ; but the one interest of the poem is as single and sustained as that of the discovery of the New World by Columbus. If any of these writers had professed in rhyme to give a history of a more extensive or protracted subject, the interest would have been so much diffused as to be lost. The genius of Homer would have sunk under the effort to make an epic poem of the conquests of Alexander; that of Milton broken down had he attempted in blank verse to narrate the campaigns of Napoleon. The confusion of ideas and incidents so painfully felt by all the readers of Orlando Furioso, and which the boundless fancy of Ariosto was unable to prevent, proves that epic poetry 110 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. has its limits, aud tliat thej are narrower than either history or romance. What epic poetry is to romance or biography, the Drama is to epic poetry. As the former selects from the romance of history its most interesting and momentous events, and makes them the subject of brilliant description, of impas- sioned rhetoric, so the latter chooses from the former its most heart-stirring episodes, and brings them in actual dia- logue and representation before the mind of the spectator. Immense is the effect of this concentration — still more mar- vellous that of the personation with which it is attended. Imagination assumes the form of actual beings ; conception of reality. The airy visions of the past are clothed in flesh and blood. The marvels of acting, scenery, and stage effect, come to add to the pathos of incident, to multiply tenfold the charms of poetry. It is impossible to conceive intellec- tual enjoyment carried beyond the point it attained, when the magic of Shakspeare's thought and language was enhan- ced by the power of Siddons' or Kemble's acting, or is now personified by the witchery of Helen Faucit's conceptions. But to the full effect of this combination, it is indispensable that the principles of dramatic composition be observed, and the stage kept within its due limits, more contracted, in point of time and place, than either romance or epic poetry. Within those bounds it is omnipotent, and produces an impression to which, while it lasts, none of the sister arts can pretend. Beyond them it never fails to break down, and not only ceases to interest, but often becomes to the last degree wearisome and exhausting. It is the combination of powers, required for excel- lence on the stage, that renders it so rare : to form an ade- quate and correct conception of the proper representation of the leading characters in the master-pieces of Sophocles, Shakspeare, or Schiller, requires a mind scarcely inferior to that of the original poets themselves. The performer must throw himself, as it were, into the mind of the author ; identify himself with the character to be represented ; con- ceive it in manner as the poet had portrayed it in words ; and then convey, by acting, this second conception to tlie spectators. By this double distillation of thouglit througli tlie soul of genius, a finer and more perfect creation is some- THE ROMANTIC DEAMA. Ill times formed than tlie efforts of any single mind, how great soever, could originally have formed. It may well be doubted, whether Shakspeare^s original conception of Lady Macbeth or Desdemona was as perfect as Mrs Siddons' personation of them ; or whether the grandeur of Cato or Coriolanus, as they existed in the original mind of Addison or the patriarch of the English stage, equalled Kemble's ini- mitable performance of them. Beautiful as were the visions of Juliet and Rosalind which floated before the mind of tlie Bard of Avon, it may be doubted whether they equalled Miss O'Neil's or Miss Helen Faucit's exquisite representa- tion of these characters. The actor or actress brings to the illustration of the great efforts of dramatic genius qualities of a different sort, in addition to those which at first per- vaded the mind of the author, but in harmony with them, and not less essential to the realisation of his conception. Physical beauty, the magic of voice, look, and manner, tlie play of countenance, the witchery of love, the step of grace, combine, with the glance of indignation, the accents of despair, to add a tenfold attraction to the creations of fancy. All the arts seem, in such representations, to combine their efforts to entrance the mind : every avenue to the heart is at once flooded with the highest, the most refined enjoyment, often with the noblest, the most elevated feelings. " For ill can poetry express Full mauy a i-each of thought sublime ; And painting, mute and motionless, Steals but a glance of time : But by the mighty actor brought, Illusion's perfect transports come ; Verse ceases to be airy thought, And sculpture to be dumb." But notwithstanding the extraordinary effect of dramatic representation in the hands of its greatest performers, nothing is more certain than that, in general, it proves a failure. It is not difficult to see to what this general failure of the drama is due. It arises from the impossibility of awakening interest without attending to unity of emotion ; of keeping alive attention without continuity of incident ; of making the story intelligible without simplicity of action. Dramatic authors, actors, and actresses, how gifted soever 112 THE ROMAXTIC DEAMA. in other respects, are the worst possible judges on this sub- ject. Thej are so famihar with the storj, from having composed the piece themselves, or made it the subject of frequent repetition or rehearsal, that thej can form no con- ception of the difficulty which nine-tenths of the audience, to whom the piece is entirely strange, experience in under- standing the plot, or acquiring any interest in the incidents or development of the piece. It may safely be affirmed, that a vast majority of the spectators of the dramas now habitually represented, with the exception of a few of Shakspeare's, which have become as household words on the English stage, never understand anything of the story till the end of the third act, and are only beginning to take an interest in the piece when the curtain falls. Dramatic authors and performers would do well to ponder on this observation ; they may rely upon it, that it furnishes the key to the present degraded state of the English drama. It is not mere stupidity on the part of the audience which occasions this. So complicated is the story, so lengthened the succession of events, in most of our modern theatrical pieces, that the most acute understanding, fortified by the most extensive practice, requiring alertness of intellect, will long be at fault in comprehending them. We have seen many a barrister famed for cross-examination on the north circuit unable to comprehend, till the piece was half over, the drift of Sheridan Knowles's dramas. Is it surprising, when this is the case, that the vast majority of the audience complain of weariness in the representation, and that the managers of theatres, sensible of this difficulty, are fain to eke out the proper interest of the drama by the meretricious aids of scenery, and dancing, and decorations '? What is constantly complained of by all classes at the theatre is, that it is so tiresome ; that the back is broken by sitting without a support ; that they cannot comprehend the story ; that they do not understand what it is all about; and that the performance is infinitely too long. This last observation is undoubtedly frequently well founded ; nowhere is the truth of old Hesiod's maxim, that a half is often greater than the whole, more frequently exemplified than in dramatic representations. But still the fact of the com- plaint being so universally made, and equally by all classes. THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. 113 is very remarkable, and pregnant with instruction as to the limits of the drama, and the causes of the decline of its popularity, so painfully conspicuous in the Britisli empire. No one complains of weariness at a trial for murder ; on the contrary, all classes, and especially the lowest, will sit at such, to them, heart-stirring scenes, with- out feeling fatigue, for ten, twelve, sometimes eighteen hours consecutively. Nor can it be affirmed that this is because the interest is real : that the life of a human beincr is at stake. Every day's experience proves that fiction, when properly managed, is moi'e interesting than reality. The vast multitude of novels which yearly issue from the press, the eagerness with which they are sought after by all classes, the extraordinary extent of their circulation, suffi- ciently proves this. No one complains that the best romances of Sir Walter Scott or Bulwer are too long ; on the contrary, they are generally felt to be too short ; and those who are loudest in their declamations against the intolerable fatigue of the theatre, will sit for days together with their feet at the fire, devouring indifferent novels. The general complaint now made in Great Britain against the tedium of theatrical representations, was unknown in other ages and countries. The passion of the Greeks for their national theatre is well known, and the matchless per- fection of their great dramatists proves to what a degree it is capable of rousing the human mind. It was a subject of complaint against ^Eschylus, that he threw many of his audience into convulsions, by the terrible power of his lyric poetry. The French, prior to the Revolution, were pas- sionately fond of the drama, which w^as then entirely founded on the Greek model. The decline complained of in the Parisian theatre has been contemporary with the introduc- tion of the Romantic school. In Italy, it is, with the opera, the chief, almost the sole public amusement. There is not a city with forty thousand inhabitants in the classic peninsula that has not a theatre and opera, superior to any- thing to be met with in the British islands out of London. The theatre is in high favour in Germany and Russia. Complaints, indeed, are frequently made, that the drama is declining on the Continent; and the present state of the lesser Parisian theatres certainly affords no indication that, YOL. III. 11 114 THE ROMAKTIC DRAMA. in departing from the old landmarks and bringing romance on the stage, thej have either preserved its pmitj or extended its influence. But the decline of the theatre is far greater and more remarkable in England than in any of tlie Continental states. It has indeed gone so far as to induce a serious apprehension among many well-informed persons that it will cease to exist, and the country of Shakspeare and Garrick, of Kemble and Siddons, be left altogether without a theatre at which the legitimate drama is repre- sented. Such a result in a country overflowing, in the great cities and metropolis at least, with riches, and passionately desirous of every species of enjoyment, is very remarkable, and deserving of the most serious consideration. It may well make us pause in our career, and consider whether the course we have been pursuing has, or has not, been likely to lead to perfection and success in this noble and important branch of composition. We have stated what are the limits of the drama, and what part is assigned to it in the general eff'ort of the human mind to portray events, or paint the human heart. Macaulay has explained, in the passage already quoted, what the Romantic drama proposes to do, and the reason why, in his estimation, it is more likely to attain its end than the more limited action of the theatre of the Greeks. The whole ques- tion comes to be, which of the two systems is best adapted to attain the undoubted end of all dramatic composition, the painting of the human heart in its most moving and inter- esting situations ? If he is right in the views he has so well expressed, it is very singular how it has happened, that in a country which, for the last three centuries, has constantly adhered to these ideas, and worked out the Romantic drama with extraordinary zeal and vigour, dramatic representations should have been constantly declining, so as at length to be threatened with total extinction. This becomes the more remarkable when it is recollected, that in other countries, inferior in wealth, genius, and energy to Great Britain, but where the old system has been adhered to, it is still flourish- ing in undiminished vigour, and that decay in them has uniformly been co-existent with the entry on the stage of Romantic representation. Racine, Corneille, Voltaire in France, and Metastasio and Alfieri in Italv ; Schiller and THE EOMAKTIC DEAMA. 115 Goethe in Germany, have nobly uj3held the legitimate drama in their respective countries. Still more extraordinary is it, if these vicAvs be the correct ones, that while, by the marvels of one heaven-born genius, the Romantic drama was in the days of Queen Elizabeth raised to the very highest perfection in this country, it has since continually languished, and can- not from his day number one name destined for immortality among its votaries. It is said in answer to this obvious objection to the Romantic drama, founded on its fate in all the countries where it has been established, that it shares in this respect only in the common destiny of mankind in creating works of imagination ; that the period of great and original con- ception is the first only — that Homer was succeeded by Virgil, ^schylus by Euripides, Dante by Tasso, Shakspeare by Pope, and that the age of genius in all countries is fol- lowed by that of criticism."'' There can be no doubt that this observation is, in many respects, well founded ; but it affords no solution of the causes of the present degraded condition of our national drama, nor does it explain the course it has taken in this country. We have made a pro- gress, but it has not been from originality to taste, but from genius to folly. The age of /Eschylus has not with us been succeeded by that of Sophocles and Euripides, but by that of Nero and the amphitheatre. We have not advanced from the wildness of conception to the graces of criticism, but from the rudeness of some barbaric imagination to the cravings of corrupted fancy. The age of Garrick has been with us succeeded, not by that of Roscius, but by that of Cerito ; the melodrama of the opera, the dancing of Carlotta Grisi, have banished tragedy from the boards trod by Kemble and Siddons. The modern dramas which have been pub- lished, and in part appeared on the stage, have in no respect been distinguished by more correct taste, or a stricter adherence to rule, than those of Ford and Massinger, of Beaumont and Fletcher, of Jonson and Shakspeare. They have discarded, indeed, the indecency which forms so serious a blot on our older dramatists, but, in other respects, they have faithfully followed out their principles. The drama still, as in earlier days, professes to exhibit in a few hours a * Macau LAYS Essays. Article; Dryden. 116 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. representation of the principal events of a lifetime. Time and place are set at naught, as they were bj the bard of Avon, and not unfrequently the last act opens at the dis- tance of years, or hundreds of miles from the first. We need only mention the ablest and most popular of our modern dramas — Tlte Lady of Lyons, by Bulwer, and the best of his theatrical pieces, by Sheridan Knowles, for a confirmation of these observations. But no one will pre- tend that the dramatic works of these writers, able in many respects as they are, can be set off against the masterpieces of the Greek or French drama which succeeded the days of JEschylus and Corneille. Again, it is said, and very commonly too, as an explana- tion of the extraordinary failure of striking dramatic genius since the days of Queen EHzabeth in this country, that ori- ginality and greatness can be reached only once in the life- time of a nation ; that we have had our Shakspeare as Greece had its Homer, and that we should be content ; and that it is the necessary effect of superlative excellence in the outset, to extinguish rivalry and induce mediocrity in the end. The observation is plausible ; and it has been so fre- quently made, that it has passed with many into a sort of axiom. But when tried by the only test of truth in human affairs — that of experience— it entirely fails. Past history affords no countenance to the idea, that early greatness extinguishes subsequent emulation, or that superlative genius in one department is fatal to subsequent perfection in it. On the contrary, it creates it. It is by the collision of one great mind with another, that the greatest achievements of the human mind have been achieved : often the chain con- tinues from one age and nation to another ; but it is never snapped asunder. Homer did not extinguish Virgil ; on the contrary, he created him. The admiration of Sophocles for ^schylus gave birth to the (Eclipus Tyranniis; Euripides wept with generous hopelessness of imitation, when he heard the tragedies of Sophocles recited at the Isthmian games. The greatness of Livy did not paralyse the hand of Tacitus; nor the eloquence of Demosthenes extinguish the voice of ^schines. Dante worshipped Virgil with an idolatrous affection ; but the greatness of the master did not destroy the pupil. The originality and power of the hiferno neither THE ROJSIANTIC DRAMA. 117 cliecked the exuberant flo\Y of Ariosto's imagination, nor the generous glow of Tasso's feelings. The bold conceptions of Michael Angelo warmed into life the exquisite genius of Raphael : the paintings of the Caracci made the youthful Correggio saj — " I, too, am a painter.'' Has poetry declined in Great Britain since it was brought to its greatest per- fection by Milton ; or tragedy in France since the great Corneille trod the stage with so noble a step ? Let Pope and Dryden, Thomson and Gray, Burns and Scott, Byron and Wordsworth, Racine, Moliere, and Voltaire, give the answer. Did Hume extinguish Gibbon ; or Addison, Johnson ; or the eloquence of Chatham prove fatal to the emulation of Pitt 1 Look around you, and it will univer- sally be found that it is the colhsion of genius with genius which produces excellence ; that the sacred fire transmitted is never lost. But Shakspeare has had no successor in this or any other country : he stands alone in un approached grandeur. Great efforts have been made in the most influential quarters in recent times to revive a taste for the old English di^amatists in this country, but they met with no lasting success. Mr Fox was an extravagant admirer of Dryden, and so strongly did the feeling take root in his family, that not even the most favoured habitue of Holland House ventured to dissent from the opinion. Serjeant Talfourd, it is said, was once nearly shipwrecked there, by venturing to express some doubt on the subject. The merits of Ion were as nothing compared to such unpardon- able heresy. The Whigs all embraced the same views; the Edinburgh Review for a long course of years sounded the praise of the old English drama; Ford and Ben Jonson, Massinger, and Beaumont and Fletcher, were perpetually the theme of their eulogium. Sir Walter Scott was so carried away by the stream, that he persuaded the Ballan- tynes thirty years ago to publish a handsome edition of Beaumont and Fletcher's plays, and the Wliigs were to a great extent concussed into buying it. For a few years the richness, pathos, raciness, and depth of the old English dramatists were in all their mouths, and Ballantyne's edition in not a few of their libraries. But all would not do. The edition remained heavy stock. Lockhart's Life 118 THE EOMANTIC DKAMA. of Scott tells what a wofiil concern it was : tlie book maj now be purchased for a fifth of its original cost. Macaulay has loudly proclaimed the same principles, and lent them the aid of his varied learning and fascinating eloquence. But it is in vain to struggle against a decided opinion of the human race. Neither Holland House nor the Edin- hurcjh Review can make men permanently overlook the glaring defects of the old English drama, apart from Shakspeare. Its extravagance, its conceits, its indecency, its constant delineation of profligate characters, have blinded men, and blinded them justly, to its vigour, its variety, its exquisite occasional beauty. Real excellence needs no bolstering. Holland House is not required to keep Milton or Pope afloat; the fame of Homer is greater than it was two thousand years ago; every successive generation is charmed by the delicacy of Virgil's taste, and fascinated by the vigour of Dante's conceptions. These considerations are fitted to cast a serious doubt on the question, how far the true principles of the drama are those which have been embraced by the English school, and may lead us to consider whether the acknowledged inferiority of our tragic writers, since the time of Shak- speare, is not in reality to be ascribed to his transcendent genius having led them astray from the true principles of the art. It will be considered in the sequel, to what cause his acknowledged success has been owing, and whether his finest dramas, those which chiefly retain their popularity, are not in reality constructed on the Grecian model. But, in the mean time, let it be considered what in reality the drama can do, and what limits are imposed upon it, not by the arbitrary rules of critics, but by the lasting nature of things. The drama is restricted by the well-known limits of human patience to a representation of three hours. Expe- rience has everywhere proved that the greatest genius, both in tlie poet and performer, cannot keep alive interest, or avert weariness, beyond that period. The spectators sit still in their places the whole time. Whatever changes of scene or external objects to look at are introduced, the audience themselves are motionless. It is to persons thus situated, and within this time, tliat theatrical represeuta- THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. 119 tions are addressed. Thej expect, aud with reason, to be amused and interested in comedy — moved and melted in tragedy. It is for tliis they go to the theatre — for this they pay their money. Writers and actors are equally a^yare that this is the case. Then what course do the Greek and the Romantic school respectively follow to attain this object '? Both in some respects follow the same course, or rather both make use, for the main part, of the same materials. It is universally acknowledged, that it is essential to the success of the drama, in all its branches, that the plot be interesting, the characters forcible, the ideas natural, the attention constantly kept up. In tragedy, by far its noblest department, it is indispensable, in addition, that the feelings should be vehemently excited in the spectators, and the human heart laid bare, by the most violent passions, in the characters on the stage. Aristotle expressly says, that it is the delineation of passions which is the object of tragedy. In order to achieve this object, all are agreed that some permanent characters must be selected, generally from those known to history, to whom striking and tragic events have occurred; and it is in the delineation of the passions which those events excite, and the interest they awaken in the breast of the spectators, that the art of the writer consists. So far both parties are agreed; but they differ widely in the methods which they respectively take to attain this object. The Romantic dramatist, overstepping the bounds of time and place, professes in three hours to portray the principal events of years — it may be of a whole lifetime. He selects the prominent events of his hero's or heroine's career — the salient angles, as it were, of human existence — and brings them forward in different scenes of his brief representation. Years often intervene between the com- mencement of his piece and its termination : the spectator is transported hundreds, it may be thousands of miles, by a mere mechanical sleight-of-hand in the scene -shifter, or between the acts. The piece may begin at Rome and end at Philippi ; it may open on a heath in Morayshire, and close at Dunsinane Castle, near the Tay. Seventeen years may elapse, as in one of Shakspeare's, between the 12Q THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. third and fourth act ; five between tlie first and second. The drama, constructed on these principles, does not repre- sent a short period, into which the crisis, as it were, of a whole lifetime is concentrated; but it gives sketches of the whole life itself, from the commencement of its eventful period, to its termination. The poet chooses the most exciting scenes out of the three volumes of the historical novel, and brings these scenes on the stage in a few hours. As the drama, constructed on this principle, professes to portray the changes of real life, so it admits, it is thought, of that intermixture of the serious and the comic, which the actual world exhibits; and willingly transports the spectator from the most highly wrought scenes of passion, the deepest accents of woe, to the burlesque of extravagant characters, or the picture of vulgar life. This is deemed admissible, because it is natural; and certainly no one can have gone from tlie drawing-room, or the library, to the stage-coach or the steam-boat, without seeing that it exhibits at least a true picture of the varied phantasmagoria which existence presents. The Greek dramatists, and their successors in modern Em'ope, proceed upon an entirely different principle. Having made their selection of the characters and the events on which their piece is to be constructed, they pitch upon that period in their progress in which matters w^ere brought to a crisis, and, for good or for evil, their destiny was accomplished. Having done this, they portray the minutest incidents of that brief period with the utmost care, and exert all their strength on the graphic painting on which every artist knows the awakening of interest is almost entirely dependant. The previous history of the principal personages is described in dialogue at the com- mencement of the piece, so as to make the spectators aware both of the great lives of the characters which are brought before them, and of the antecedent events which had brought matters to their present crisis. Having carried them to this point, the crisis itself is portrayed at full length, and with all the power and pathos of which the artist is capable. The poet does not pretend to narrate the campaign from its commencement to its termination : he commences his piece with the beginning of the last battle. THE ROMANTIC DEAMA. 121 and exerts all his strength in painting the decisiTe charge. He does not give the voyage from its commencement to its termination, ^vith its long periods of monotonous weariness: he confines himself to the brief and terrible scene of the shipwreck. As the crisis and catastrophe of life is thus alone represented, and everything depends on the interest excited by its development, so nothing is admitted which can disturb the unity of the emotion, or interrupt the flow of the sympathy which it is the great object of the piece from first to last to awaken. If it were ^possible to create the same interest, or delineate character and passion as completely, by brief and consequently imperfect sketches of a whole lifetime, as it is by a minute and glowing representation of its most eventful period, much might be advanced w^ith justice in favour of the Romantic school of the drama. Our objection is, that this is impossible ; and that the failure of the English theatre, since the time of Shakspeare, is entirely to be ascribed to this impossibility. And the impossibility is owing to the length of time which it requires, by narrative or representation, to kindle that warm and glowing image, or awaken those ardent feelings in the mind of another, upon which the emotion of taste and the success of all the Fine Arts depend. In the arts which address themselves to the eye, and to the heart through it, it is possible to produce a very strong impression almost instantaneously. A beautiful woman has only to be seen to be admired ; a charming landscape bursts upon the sight with immediate and almost magical force. The impression produced by the finest objects in Europe — the sun setting on the Jungfrauhorn, the interior of St Peter's, the fall of SchafFhausen, the view from the Acropolis of Athens, Constantinople from the Seraglio Point, the bay of Naples from the Belvidere, for example — is such, that though seen only for a few minutes, it may almost be said seconds, an impression is made, a picture is painted, on the mind's retina, which can never be eff^aced. Painting, as it imitates external nature, so shares in the rapidity and, in the hands of great masters, durability of its impressions. Sculpture and architecture have the same advantage. Yet even in these arts, the productions of which require only to be seen to be admired, it is well known that the impression, strong 122 THE KOMAXTIC DRAMA. as it is at first, is, with all persons of a cultivated mind, greatly increased bj repeated inspections. The common observation, that a fine painting or statue grows upon jou the oftener jou see it, and that " Time but the impression deeper makes," sufficiently proves that it is not at once, even in those arts which speak at once to the eye, that the soul of the artist is transferred to that of the spectator. But the case is entirely different with those arts — -such as history, romance, epic poetry, or the drama — which do not at once produce a visible object to the mind, but give descriptions or dialogues by which the reader or spectator is required to form a mental object or awaken a mental interest of his ov>'n creation, though from the materials furnished, and under the guidance of the genius of the artist. It is not instantaneously that this can be done : on tlie contrary, it is by very slow degrees, and many successive efforts, that the inward picture is created in the mind, the absorbing interest awakened in the heart, which gives the pleasure or rouses the sympathy which it is the object of the writer to communicate. A very little reflection will be sufficient to show that this observation is well founded, in all the arts of narrative or description. And nothing, we apprehend, can be clearer than that the Romantic Drama has failed because it pro- fesses, within limits, and by means which render the attempt hopeless, to excite this interest. Notwithstanding the wxU-known and proverbial dulness of history, there are many historical compositions which do succeed in awakening a durable and sometimes absorbing interest in the mind of the reader. Probably few works professedly addressed to the imagination have awakened in many breasts so deep and lasting an interest as the narrative of Livy, the biography of Tacitus, the pictured page of Gibbon. Such works are almost always complained of as dull at first ; but the interest gradually waxes warmer as the narrative proceeds; the feelings become roused on one side, or in favour of one hero or another, in the great drama of the world ; and not unfrequently in the end the most attractive works of imagination are laid aside for the annals of real events. But how is it that this interest is awakened ? By the study of months, sometimes of years ; by an interest produced by the reading of a whole winter by the fireside. THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. 123 Let any man try, in a narrative of long-cont'mued historical events, to excite a deep interest in a space wliicli can be read in three hours, and the powers of Tacitus or Gibbon would at once fail in the attempt. It is quite possible in that brief period to awaken the deepest interest in a single or closely connected series of events, as a battle, a siege, a revolt, a shipwreck ; but wholly impossible to do so with incidents scattered over a long course of years. The interest so generally felt in epic poetry and romance is excited in the same way, though in a much shorter period. As the colours of these species of composition are more brilliant, the feelings more chastened, the events more select, the characters more prominent, the catastrophe more rapidly brought about, than in real life, so the artist has the means, in a much shorter period, of awakening the interest upon the growth of which the success of his work is chiefly dependant. But nevertheless, even there, it is by comparatively slow degrees, and by reading for a very considerable period, that the interest is created. It is wholly impossible to produce it, or make the story or the characters intelligible, in a few hours. Every scholar recollects the delight with which his mind grew, as it were, under the fire of Homer's conceptions, his taste matured under the charm of Virgil's feeling ; but none will pretend that the intense delight he felt could be awakened, if he had read extracts of their most brilhaut passages in a few hours : this pleasure was the feast, his interest the growth, of weeks and months. No reader of Tasso, Milton, or Klopstock, for the first time, would think he could acquire an interest in the Jerusalem Delivered, the Paradise Lost, or the Messiah between tea and supper. Many of their finest passages might be read in that brief space, and their beauty as pieces of poetry fully appreciated; but it would be wholly impossible in so sliort a time to awaken an interest in the whole story, or the fate of the principal characters. Nevertheless it would be quite possible, in that period, to excite the deepest sympathy with some of their most striking events or episodes tahen singly — as the parting of Hector and Andromache, or the death of the Trojan hero, in the Iliad; the love of Dido for yEneas, or the catastrophe of Nisus and Euryalus, in the Mneid; the death of Clorinda, or the flisfht of Erminia, in the Jerusalem delivered. The 124 THE EOMAXTIC DKAMA. reason is, that it is possible in a short space to point a single catastrophe ^Yith such force and minuteness as to excite the warmest sympathy, but wholly impossible to effect that object within such limits, with a long series of consecutive events. Again, look at the historical romance or the common novel. No one needs to be told how deep and universal is the interest which the masterpieces in that department awaken. Whatever may be said as to the decline of the public taste for the drama, most certainly there is no symptom of any abatement in the general interest awakened by works of fiction ; but that interest is of comparatively slow growth. It would be impossible to produce it in a few hours. It is excited by the reading of three evenings by the fireside. No one would deem it possible to awaken the interest, or make the characters intelligible, in three hours. The experiment may very easily be made. Let any one take up one of the most popular novels we possess — Tvanhoe, Waverleij, Rienzi, Ernest Maltravers, Attila, Philip Augustus, the Beer slayer, the Last of the Mohicans, the Last of the Baroiw, or Harold, and read two or three chapters out of each volume, such as might be concluded between seven and ten, to a circle of persons previously unacquainted with these works, and see in what state they are when the intellectual feast has terminated. The theatre always contains a large majority of persons who have not previously witnessed the performance, and are ignorant of the plot. It is true that to the aid of six or eight chapters culled out of three volumes, the Romantic dramatist brings the auxiliaries of acting, scenery, and stage effect ; but that adds little to the power of exerting deep sympathy or powerful emotion. Such feelings cannot be awakened without minute painting and continuity of action, and they are excluded by the very nature of the Romantic drama. That species of composition proposes to give a picture of tlie principal events of a long period, as the peristrephic panorama does of the chief scenes of a great space, as the whole course of the Rhine or the Danube. Every one knows how inferior the interest it excites is to those in which the whole skill of the artist and outlay of the proprietor have been exerted on a single picture, as the original round one of Barker and THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. 125 Burford. The art of panoramic painting has signally receded, since the moving panorama has been substituted for the fixed one. A series of galloping lithographic sketches of Italy, however highly coloured or skilfully drawn, will never paint that lovely peninsula like a single sunset of Claude in the bay of Naples. Claude himself could not do so in his varied sketches, graphic and masterly as they are. The Romantic drama is the Liber Yeritatis ; the Greek drama is the finished Claude in the Doria Palace or the Xational Gallery. Few persons will hesitate to say which excites tlie strongest admiration, which they would rather possess. Performers on the stage are very naturally led to form an erroneous opinion on this subject. Many of the most cap- tivating qualities they possess are seen at once. Physical beauty, elegance of manner, a noble air, a majestic carriage, a lovely figure, a bewitching smile, produce their effect instantaneously. No one needs to be told how quickly and powerfully they speak to the heart, how warmly they kindle the imagination. But that admiration is personal to the' artist ; it does not extend to the piece, nor can it overcome its imperfections. It gives pleasure often of the very highest kind ; but it is a pleasure very diff'erent from the true interest of dramatic representation, and cannot be relied on to sustain the interest of an audience for a long period. It is where these powers of the performer are exerted on a drama constructed on its true principles, that the full delight of the theatre is felt. No talents in the performer can sus- tain a faulty piece. We cannot sit three hours merely to admire the most beautiful and gifted actress that ever trod the boards. Mental sympathy, the rousing of the feelings is required, and that is mainly the work of the poet, or of the performer imbued with his spirit. AVe daily see master- pieces of the Romantic drama, sustained by the greatest ability on the stage, performed to empty benches. But the theatres were constantly crowded at Athens ; the Theatre Frau^ais is never empty at Paris. We never saw a copy of Sir Walter Scott's novels at a circulating library, that was not thumbed and pulled about till it was ready to fall in pieces. We are the more confirmed in the opinion that these are the true principles of dramatic composition, from observing 126 THE ROMAXTIC DRAMA. liow generally they are applicable to the historical noA^el ; how clearly they are illustrated by the decided verdict of public opinion pronounced on the works of the most popular writers in that species of composition. The three novels of Sir Walter Scott that are most admired, are Ivanhoe, The Bride of Lammermoor, and The Abbot. Well, these romances have the interest concentrated within the narrowest limits. The Bride of Lammermoor is a Greek drama in prose. It has its simplicity of story, unity of emotion, and terrible concluding catastrophe. Lucia di Lammermoor, performed with signal success in every opera of Europe, is a proof how easily it was dramatised. It is the only one of Sir Walter's novels that, out of Scotland, where local feel- ings warp the judgment, has been durably successful on the stage. The principal events in Ivanhoe and The Abbot are each contracted within three days ; the characters which interest in each, are only two or three in number. Look at Cooper. The great secret of his success is the minuteness and fidelity of his painting, and the graphic form with which heart-stirring events occurring within a very short period are painted. In the most admired of all his novels, The Deer- slayer, the whole scene is laid on the borders of a single lake, and the interest arises from the adventures of two girls on its watery bosom. Events in The Pathfinder, The Last of the Mohicans, and The Prairie, are nearly as concen- trated in point of time and characters, though, as the story depends in each on the adventures of a party on a journey, a considerable transference of place is of course introduced. The Promessi Sposi of Manzoni has acquired a European reputation, and every reader of it knows how entirely its interest is dependant on the unity of interest and extraor- dinary fidelity and skill with which, within narrow limits, the characters, events, and still life, are portrayed. In those romances again, and they are many, in which great latitude in the unities has been taken, it is very rarely that the skill of the artist has succeeded in preventing a painful break in the interest, or cessation in the sympathy, where any considerable transposition of place or overleaping of time occurs. It is very frequent in James's novels to see this done ; but we believe he never yet had a reader in whom it did not excite a feeling of regret. When a chapter THE PvOMAXTIC DEAMA. 127 begins — ''We must uow transport the reader to a distant part of the country " — or " Many years after the events detailed in the last chapter had occurred, t^YO persons met in a hostelry on the side of a forest," &c., we may rely upon it that not only is the scene changed, but the interest, for the time at least, is lost. The pictures formed in the mind, the interest awakened in the events, the admiration felt for the characters, are alike at an end. The chain of sympathy is broken with the rupture of the continuity of events. The reader's mind sets out as it were on a new track, in which the sails must be spread and the oars worked afresh. Everything must be done over again ; fresh pictures conjured up in the mind, new interests awakened in the breast from the last starting-point. But it is seldom that such new interests can supply the want of those which have been lost ; or that, where such a system is adopted, even a sustained sympathy can be maintained throughout. We do not say that the first love is exclusive of any other ; but only that the interest is not to be transferred from one to the other, until a considerable time has elapsed, and no small pains have been taken. Several such dislocations of place, or violations of time, will prove fatal to a novel, though written with the utmost ability, and managed in other respects with the most consummate skill. Every reader of Mr James's romances, which in many respects possess very high merits, must be sensible of the truth of this observation ; and all the richness of colouring, and fidelity in drawing, in Sir L. Bulwer's splendid historical romance of Rienzi^ the finest composition in that style in existence, cannot take away the painful impression produced by the long interval which elapses between the commencement of the story, where the characters first appear, its middle, where the real interest is developed, and its termination where the catastrophe occurs. It is on the centre, where unity of interest is strictly kept up, that the success of the work depends. In the historical romance, however, such diffusion of the events over a long period, though extremely difficult to be managed, in consistence with the preservation of interest in the story, is adverse to no principle ; because it is the very object of that species of mingled truth and fiction to narrate a lengthened course of events as they affected the history of 128 THE EOMANTIC DEAMA. individual men ; and the only unity to which the author is restricted by the principles of his art is the unity of interest. But the curious thing is, that in the Romantic drama this difficulty is yoluntarily undertaken when no necessity exists for its introduction ; nay, when the principles of the art, as eyinced in the works of its greatest masters, forbid its adop- tion. What would the historian give to be able to dwell only on the brilliant episodes of his period — to be permitted to throw aside the long intervening years of monotony or prose, and dwell only on those where the poetry of existence is brought forth '? On what scenes does the romance writer dwell with transport — where does he paint with force and minuteness but in those incidents, generally few and far between in his volumes, which form the fit subject of dramatic composition ^ The stage alone is relieved from the necessity of portraying the prosaic adjunct to poetic interest ; the dramatist only is permitted to select the decisive crisis — the burning incident of life — and present it with all the additions of poetry, music, scenery, and per- sonation. Strange that, when thus relieved of the fetters which so grievously restrain the other species of human narrative, he should voluntarily choose to wear them ; that when at liberty to soar on the eagle's wing, he should gratuitously assume the camel's load ! In truth, the adoption of the Romantic style in theatrical composition, and the tenacity with which, despite centuries of failure, it is still adhered to by dramatic poets, is mainly to be ascribed to a secret sense of inability to work up the simpler drama of Greece with the requisite force and effect. Men distrust their own powers in awakening a continued interest for hours from one interest, or the portraying of a single catastrophe. They are fain to borrow the adventitious aid to be derived, as they think, from frequent changes of time and place. They rail at the drama of Athens, as many modern artists do at the paintings of Claude Lorraine, because they feel themselves unable to imitate them. They crowd their canvass with objects, from a secret sense of inability to finish any one with perfect force and fidelity. In that way they flatter themselves that the defects of their composition will be less strongly felt, and the audience will experience something like the enjoyment THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. 129 of foreign travelling without any great trouble on the part of their conductor, from the brilliant succession of pictures which is presented to their intellectual vision. Thej forget only one thing, but it generally proves fatal to their whole undertaking. Foreign travelling is delightful ; but it is only so when sufficient time is allowed to see the objects properly, and take in the impression. Without this, it is little more than a ^ievous fatioue, reheved bv one or two splendid but fleeting pictures painted on the mind. The drama being limited to a three hours' representation, must portray the events of years, if it attempts it, at railway speed. Thence it is, that no greater pleasure is in general felt from its representations than fi'om seeing the tops of villages or the steeples of churches fleeting past when travelling fifty miles an hour on the Great Western. If we would really enjoy nature, we must stop short and sketch one of them, and then we shall feel pleasure indeed. It is a most grievous but unavoidable consequence of this original departure, as we deem it, from right principle in dramatic composition, that it leads by a natural and almost unavoidable transition to all the extravagances and mere- tricious aids, the presence of which has so long been felt as the chief disgraces of the British stage. As long as the unities of time and place are adhered to, the poet has no resource but in the force of character, the pathos of incident, the beauty of language. If he does not succeed in these, he is lost. But the moment that he feels himself at liberty to change the scene or time at pleasure, there is no end to the assistance which he will seek to derive from such adventitious support, how foreign soever to the real interest and true principles of his art. Frequent changes of scene, gorgeous pictures of buildings or scenery, brilliant exhibitions of stage efi'ect, processions, battles, storming of castles, the clang of trumpets, the clashing of swords, the discharge of firearms, are all resorted to in order to save the trouble of thought, or conceal mediocrity of conception. It may be that such exhibitions are very attractive, that they draw full houses of children, or of men and women with the minds of children — no small portion of the human race. But no one will assert that they are the drama, any more than that name belonged to the exhibitions of lions or cameleopards in the VOL. IIT. I 130 THE EOMANTIC DEAMA. Roman amphitheatre. But the Romantic drama, bj the unbounded latitude in point of time, pkce, and incident which it permits, opens the door to all these substitutes for genius Tvhich the great drama, bj excluding them, kept carefully closed. Therefore it is that the corruption of taste has been much more rapid and irremediable in the countries by whom it has been adopted, than in those in which the old landmarks were adhered to ; and that in the latter the taste for extravagance in the public, and the degradation in the character of dramatic composition, has always been con- temporary with the introduction of the Romantic style on the theatre. To see to what the Romantic style leads, we have only to look at the dramatic pieces founded on the favourite works of fiction which have recently appeared in England and France. Dramas in both countries have been formed on the stories of the most popular novels of Scott, Bulwer, V^ictor Hugo, Janin, and Eugene Sue. What success have they had ? What sort of things are they '? We pass over the horrors, the indecency, adulterous incest, and murders of the modern French drama, founded on the romances of these popular and imaginative novelists, and come to the dramas founded on our own great romance writers, against whom no such charges can be brought, and the original plots of which have been constructed with the utmost talent by the greatest master of prose fiction the world ever saw. What has been the fate of the dramas of Ivanlioe, The Antiquary, Guy Mannering, Roh Roy, or Sir Walter's other popular novels '? With the exception of the lowest class of Scotch audiences, who roar on the representations of Dandie Dinmont, Bailie Nicol Jarvie, or the like, it may safely be affirmed that they have everywhere proved entire failures. The talent of a popular actress may for a time keep some of them up ; but left to themselves, they have everywhere sunk to the ground. The reason is evident. The story is so complicated, and leaps so from one thing to another, from a desire to skim over the whole novel, that, except to those who have the original by heart, it is absolutely unin- telligible. As to awakening interest, the thing is out of the question — it cannot even be understood but by referring to the original work. What would the inhabitants of New THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. 131 Zealand make of such dramatised romances if revived in their theatres two thousand years Iience, as Antigone has lately been with such brilliant effect in these islands "? The experiment will never be made, for not one of them will sur- vive ten years. Yes ! there is one — -Lucia de Lammermoor — which will be a favourite subject for the drama to the end of time ; for the original story, as already observed, is just a Greek drama in prose. But all the genius of Scott, second neither to that of ^Eschylus or Sophocles in inven- tion, could not render his brilliant romances fit, with that exception, for the stage, because their construction is at variance with the principles of dramatic composition. It is said that the sketch of a whole lifetime, or of many years, is essential to tlie true development of character, which it is the great end of the drama to exhibit, because it is by the varied events of so long a period that we are made acquainted with it in real life. Here again we join issue with our opponents, and do most confidently maintain that the Greek drama, which professes to paint the heart by the paroxysms of passion it undergoes in the crisis of its fate, is much more likely to do it faithfully and efiectually than the Romantic, which portrays the events of a whole lifetime. When it is said that the object of the drama is to paint the human heart, a distinction must be made. The heart may become known by ordinary life or moments of crisis, by its habitual turn or impassioned scenes. The novelist, who portrays a whole life, may delineate it in the first way ; but the dramatic poet, who is limited to a representation of three hours, must of necessity embrace the latter. But if the delineation of the heart by its expressions or sufferings in moments of passion, when it is laid bare by the vehemence of emotions, be the end in view, it must at once be evident that it is much more likely to be attained by vividly and minutely painting a single decisive crisis, with the acts and feelings to which it gives rise, than by presenting compara- tively hurried and imperfect sketches of previous events, when the current of life ran comparatively smoothly. Every one knows how much the character of the French church and nobility rose during the sufi'erings of the Revolution ; with truth was the instrument of their execution called the " holy guillotine," from the virtues previously unheard of 132 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. ^vhicli it brought to light. Could any dramatic sketcli of their previous lives paint the inmost heart of their victims so well as one faithful portrait of their conduct in the supreme hour 1 Could the mingled greatness and meanness of Napoleon's character be so well portrayed, by a sketch of his life and impressive scenes from Lodi to St Helena, as by a graphic dehneation of his conduct in the decisive crisis at Waterloo 1 It sounds well, no doubt, to say, as Macaulay does, that the Romantic drama exhibits all the plans of a man's life, from the ardour of generous youth to the coolness of experienced age. This may be done in history or romance ; but it is impossible within the limits of a single representa- tion. It is quite enough if, in so short a space, the stage can represent one momentous crisis with adequate power, and really paint the heart as laid bare by its occurrence. He wlio knows how difficult it is to do that in a single instance, will feel that the effect can only be weakened by repeated draughts upon the sympathy of the audience, from the effect of different CA^ents in the same piece. The attempt to do so scarce ever fails to weaken the effect of the whole piece, by distracting the interest and confusing the idea of the spectators. If it succeeds, the result, like the repeated demands which JNIatthews made on our risible faculties, in general is to produce an effect directly the reverse of what was intended. The comedian, by trying too often to make us laugh, made us in the end more ready to cry ; the tragedian, by trying too often to make us cry, succeeds sometimes only in making us laugh. But what, then, it is said, is to be made of Shakspeare, and how is his transcendant and universally acknowledged greatness, while setting the unities at defiance, to be recon- ciled with those principles '? We accept the challenge ; we take the case of the Bard of Avon, with his deathless fame, and maintain that his dramatic excellence not only affords no impeachment of what has now been advanced, but furnishes its most decisive confirmation. When it is commonly said that Shakspeare sets the unities at defiance, and assumed that his success has been owing to his disregarding them, the fact is not correctly stated, and the inference is not logically drawn. It is THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. 133 a mistake to say that the unities are always disregarded by the great English tragedian. In many of his most popular pieces, they are maintained nearly as strictly as they were by Sophocles ; and we are aware of not one of his dramas which is still represented with undiminished effect on the stage, in which the principle of the unities may not distinctly be recognised, and the long-continued success is not to be traced to their observation. The Greeks, as every scholar knows, took great latitude with time in their representations. The interval between one act and anotlier, often even the time occupied by the chanting of the chorus, frequently was made to cover a very considerable time, during w^hich battles w^ere fought, a duel or a conspiracy broke forth, an execution took place, and the most momentous events of the piece off the stage occurred. In place, it is true, they were strictly limited ; the scene never changed, and all the incidents were intro- duced by bringing successive persons upon it. In this respect, it may be admitted, they carried their strict- ness too far. Probably it arose from the pieces being represented, for the most part, in the open air, under circumstances when the illusion produced by a change of scene, such as we witness at our theatres, was difficult, if not impossible, from the audience being, for the most part, above the actors, and the stage having no top. But to what- ever cause it may have been owing, we hold the adherence to unity of place an unnecessary and prejudicial strictness in the Greek theatre. But a very slight deviation from it alone seems admissible ; and the unity of action or emotion seems to be the very essence of this species of composition. The true principle appears to be, that the place should not change to a greater extent than the spectators can conceive the actors to have gone over without inconvenience within the time embraced in the representation. This time often extended with the Greeks to a half, or even a whole day, and there seems nothing adverse to principle in such extension. Changes of scene, therefore, from one room in a palace to another ; from one part of a town to another ; or even from a town to a chateau, garden, forest, or other place in its near vicinity, appear to be perfectly admissible, without any violation of true dramatic principle. The 134 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. popular opera of the " Black Domino," to Tvliicli the charin- inof siiifrinir and actino: of Madame Thillon has recently given such celebrity at the Hajmarket, may be considered in this respect as a model of the unities taken in a reason- able sense. The time which elapses in the piece is a single night ; the subject is the adventures which befell the heroine during that period ; the scene changes, but only to the places in the same town to which she went duriug its continuance. There seems nothing inconsistent with the production of unity of interest in such a latitude. And with this inconsiderable expansion of the old Greek unities, it will be found that Shakspeare's greatest plays, and those which experience has found to be best adapted for the stage, have been constructed on the true principles. Take for example Romeo andJuliet, ?ini\.As you Like it — perhaps the tragedy and comedy of his composition which have most completely kept their hold of the stage. The unities are nearly as closely observed in both as in any drama of Sophocles. Excepting only a slight alteration of place and scene, everything is concentrated. The interest and emotion, which is the great point, is maintained one and indivisible. With the exception of Romeo^s banish- ment to Mantua, and the scene witli the druggist there, which, after all, is but an episode, and took the hero only two hours' drive from Verona, the place is confined to different scenes in that town. The festive hall where the lovers first meet — the exquisite meeting on the balcony — Father Ambrose's cell — the room where Juliet coaxes the nurse — the garden where she parts from Romeo when " Xiglit's candles ai^e burnt out, and jocund day Stands tiptoe on the misty mountain's top — " the terrible scene where Juliet contemplates wakening in the tomb amidst her ancestors' bones ! — the mausoleum itself, where the catastrophe occurs, are all in the same town. The time supposed to elapse does not exceed twenty-four hours ; not more tlian in the Eledra or Iphigenia in Aulis of Euripides. The interest, dependant entirely on tlie ardent love of Juliet, is as much undivided as in the Antigone of Sophocles. And yet we are told Shakspeare succeeded by disregarding the unities. Again, in As you Like it, the same observation holds THE EOMANTIC DRAMA. 135 true. Whoever recollects the scenes of that delightful drama — to ^^hich modern genius, in our first tragic actress, Miss Helen Faucit, has recently added such additional charms — must be sensible that it is, with the single excep- tion of the scenes of the wrestlers in the first act, nothing but a Greek drama on the English stage. Menander or Aristophanes would have made one of the characters recount that scene, which is merely introductory, and introduced Rosalind and her companions for the first time in the Forest of Arden, where the real interest of the piece com- mences. A slight change of scene, indeed, occurs from one part of the forest to another, but it is so inconsiderable as in no degree to interfere with the unity of effect. The single interest awakened by Rosalind's secret love and playful archness of manner is kept up undivided throughout. So also in The Tempest, the unities in all the scenes which excite sympathy are as completely preserved as ever they were on the Greek stage ; and the angelic innocence of Miranda stands forth in as striking and undivided relief as the devotion of Antigone to sisterly affection, or the self- immolation of Iphigenia to patriotic duty. We are well aware that there are characters of a very different kind in that drama ; but the interest is concentrated on those in which the unity is preserved. Look at Othello. In what play of Euripides is singleness of interest more completely preserved than in that noble tragedy '? The haughty bearing, con- scious pride, but ardent love of the Moor ; the deep love of Desdemona, nourished, as we so often see in real life, by qualities in her the very reverse ; the gradual growth of jealousy from her innocent sportiveness of manner, and the diabohcal machinations of lago ; her murder, in a tit of jealousy, by her despairing husband, and his self-sacrifice when the veil was drawn from his eyes, are all brought for- ward, if not with the literal strictness of the Greek drama, at least with as much regard to unity of time, place, and action, as is required by its principles. It is the same in Schiller. The interest of all his finest tragedies is almost as much centralised as it is in the Greek drama ; and one of the most perfect of them, The Bride of Messina, is a Greek tragedy complete. We are well aware that there are many other dramas, 136 THE ROMAKTIC DRAMA. and those, perhaps, not less popular, of Sliakspeare, in which unity of time and place is entirely set at defiance, and in which the piece ends at the distance of hundreds of miles, sometimes after the lapse of years, from the point whence it commenced. Macbeth, Julius Gcesar, Richard III., Henry 7., Hamlet, and many others, are examples of this deviation from former principle, and it is to the universal admiration which they excite that the national partiality for the Romantic drama is to be ascribed. But in all these instances it will be found — and the observation is a most material one — that the real interest is nearly as much centrahsed as it was in the Greek stage, and that it is on the extraordi- nary fascination which a few scenes, or the incidents grouped round a single event, possess, that the success of the piece depends. The historical tragedies read well, just as an historical romance does, and from the same cause, that they are looked on, not as dramas, but as brilliant passages of history. But this has proved unable to support them on the theatre. One by one they have gradually dropped away from the stage. Some are occasionally revived, from time to time, in order to display the power of a particular actor or actress, but never with any lasting success. Those plays of Sliakspeare which alone retain their hold of the theatre, are either those, such as Romeo and Juliet, qx As you Hike it, in which the unities are substantially observed, or those in which the resplendent brilliancy of a few characters or scenes, within very narrow limits, fixes the attention of the audience so completely as to render comparatively harmless, because unfelt, the distraction produced by the intermixture of farce in the subordinate persons, or the violations of time and place in the structure of the piece. But it is not to every man that the pencil of the Bard of Avon, " Dipp'd in the orient lines of heaven," is given ; and the subsequent failure of the Romantic drama, in this and every other country, is mainly to be ascribed to succeeding writers not having possessed his power of fixing, by the splendid colours of genius, the attention of the spec- tators on a particular part of the piece. Shakspeare dis- regards the unities in form ; but his burning imagination restores their operations in substance, for it fixes the mind's gaze on spots of transcendant light. THE EOMANTIC DRAMA. 137 Take for example the most popular of the really Romantic dramas, Macbeth and Hamlet. No one need be told how the unities are violated in the first of these pieces : that it begins on a heath in Morayshire, where the witches appear to the yictorious Thane ; that the murder of tlie King takes place in the Castle of Inverness ; that the usurper is slain by Macdufi* in front of Dunsinane Castle near the Tay. But none can either have read the play, or seen it acted, without feeling that the real interest lies in the events which occurred, and the ambitious feelings which were awakened in Macbeth and his wife, when temptation was put in their way within their own halls. Sophocles would have laid the scene there, and made one of the characters narrate in the outset the appearance of tlie witches on the heath, and brought Macdulf to the gates of Macbeth's castle shortly after the murder of Duncan, to avenge his death. Shak- speare has not done this ; but he has painted the scenes in the interior of the castle, before and after the murder, with SQch force and effect, that the mind is as much riveted by them as if no previous or subsequent deviation from the unities had been introduced. Hamlet begins in a strain of unparalleled interest : had the fom- last acts proceeded in the same sublime style as the first, and the filial duty devolved by the ghost on his son of avenging his murder been discharged as rapidly as it should have been, and as the feelings of the audience led them to desire, it would have been perhaps the most powerful tragedy in the world. Had Shakspeare proceeded on the principles of the Greek drama, he would have done this, and produced a drama as univer- sally admired as the Agamemnon of yEschylus. But every one feels that the interest is weakened and wellnigh lost as the play proceeds : new characters are introduced, the bur- lesque succeeds the sublime, the original design is forgotten; and when the spectre appears a second time "to whet your almost blunted purpose," his appearance is felt to be as neces- sary to revive the decaying interest of the piece as to resus- citate the all but forgotten fervour of the Prince of Denmark. We feel that we have committed high treason in the estimation of a large part of our readers, by contesting the justice of the principles on which Shakspeare proceeded in the construction of many of his dramas ; and we know 138 THE ROMANTIC DRAMA. that the opinions aclrancecl are adverse to those of many, whose genius and professional success entitle their judgment on this subject to the rerj highest respect. But yet the weight of authority, if that is to be appealed to, is decidedly in favour of the principles of the Greek being the true ones of the drama. From the days of Aristotle to those of Addison, the greatest critics have concurred in this opinion ; and he is a bold innovator on this subject who sets at naught the precepts of Horace''' and Quintilian, forgets the example of Sophocles and Schiller, of Euripides and Alfieri, of Cor- neille and Metastasio, of Racine and ]Moliere, and disregards the decided judgment of Pope and Byron. '■' Those rules of old discover'd not devised, As Xature still but Xature methodised ; Xature like Liberty is best restrain'd By the same laws which first herself ordain'd. Hear how learn'd Greece her useful rules indites, When to repi'ess, and when indulge our flights. Just precepts thus from great examples given, She drew from them what they derived from heaven." G7i Criticism. The opinion of Lord Byron was peculiarly strong in favour of the unities, and was repeatedly expressed in his corre- spondence preserved in ]\Ioore's Life : although his own noble dramas, being avowedly constructed with no view to repre- sentation, but as a vehicle for powerful declamation or impassioned poetry, often exliibit, especially in Manfred, the most glaring violations of them. Johnson confessed that the weight of authority in favour of the Greek rules was so great, that it required no small courage to attempt even to withstand it. But it is not by authority that this, or any other question of taste, is to be decided. The true test of the correctness of opinion on such matters is to be found in experience, and the inward feelings of persons of cultivated minds and enlarged observations. And in the preceding observations we have only extended to the drama principles familiar to artists in every other department of human imagination, and generally admitted in them, at least, to be correct ; and appealed, we trust not in vain, to the experi- ence gained, and the lessons learned, by those who have culti- vated the sister arts in these times with the greatest success. * " Vos exemplaria Grseca Nocturna versate manu, vei'sate diuraa." Ars Poetica. WELLINGTON [CHURCH OF ENGLAND REVIEW, April 1845] " Genius," says Dr Johnson, " is nothing but strong natural parts accidentally turned into one direction." Few can have surveyed with an attentive eye the varieties of human charac- ter, at least of the highest class, whether in the historic mirror or real life, without being convinced that the observation of the great moralist is well founded. It is a very common thing, indeed, to see a strong propensity evinced, even in the earliest years, by particular persons, and it is the frequency of tliis peculiarity which has caused genius to be so frequently asso- ciated, in general opinion and common language, with an original and unalterable bent. It undoubtedly is so in many instances. INIozart, three years old, dispLayed not only a taste but a genius for music ; Correggio declared in boyhood, " I, too, am a painter ;" Canova, at nine years of age, made a little lion out of a pound of butter ; Byron, at ten, felt an ardour of passion for an infant beauty of the same years, which was scarcely surpassed by the subsequent attachments of his impassioned mind. But in these early and preco- cious displays of inherent disposition, it is rarely, if ever, that the premonitory symptoms of the highest kind of intellectual power, or the noblest flights of original conception, are to be found. They appear thus early in persons in whom the imaginative are far stronger than the reasoning powers — the former often spring up with the utmost vigour at once ; the latter require time for their growth — they rarely, if ever, appear before the age of puberty. Imagination combinedwith intellect, genius with reason, the greatest triumph of the Maxims and Opinions of the Duke of Wellinfjton, collected from his Despatches and Speeches. Londou : 1845. 140 WELLINGTON. human mind, of tarclj development, and generally little conspicuous in youth, goes on gathering strength and increasing in intensity to the close of life. This is easily explained, if we consider that a quick and fervent mind readily fans a flame from a few perishable materials ; but a great one requires mighty and durable elements to warm into a glow : " Materia alitur, motibus excitatur, et urendo lucescit." If instances are numerous in which persons destined for future celebrity have given tokens of their inherent bent in their early years, examples are not less frequent of persons of the greatest future fame being remarkable for nothing at all in the first stages of life, or, if distinguished, known only by qualities the very reverse of those on which their future celebrity was founded. Julius Caesar, to the age of thirty- seven, was distinguished only by the licentiousness and pro- fligacy of his life ; he was a living example of the oft- repeated saying, "' that no man who had both in his power, ever did anything among men till he had ceased to have any influence with women." Burke evinced no particular ability at school or college ; and, what is very remarkable, the reasoning powers are chiefly conspicuous in his earlier com- positions, the fervour of imagination, united to the vigour of intellect, in those of his maturity or old age. The common story of Shakspeare having been a deer-stealer in his youth, be it true or false, may be regarded as at least a certain proof that he did not, in early life, evince any of those extra- ordinary powers of conception and imagination which have rendered his name immortal His profound knowledge of the human heart demonstrates the reverse ; that is never gained but by experience and sufl'ering. Bacon's latest writings exhibit far greater original genius, vigour of expres- sion, and energy of thought, than his earlier compositions. It was when blinded by study, and worn out by care, old and unfortunate, that Milton wrote his Paradise Lost. Sopliocles composed his Tragedies in such advanced years, that, when engaged in writing one of the most perfect of them, his sons brought him before the courts of law to have him deprived, as incapable, of tlie management of his affairs. Dante's Inferno was the fruit of twenty years' exile, in which " life," as he himself said, " had been watered only by his WELLINGTON. 141 tears/' Nothing that can be relied on is known of the youth of Homer ; but common and unvarying tradition, which represents him in extreme old age, blind, and in misery, charming the inhabitants of the Isles of Greece by bis strains, is an indication that it was in mature years that his deathless poems were composed. A long life of observa- tion, thought, and reflection, combined with the utmost ardour of imagination, were required to form the Iliad and Odyssey. Wellington belongs to the latter, and by far the highest class of illustrious characters. He was not a great man because he was a great general, but a great general because he was a great man. He would have been equally great in anything else which he undertook. It is reported that he has said, " that the native bent of his mind was towards finance and civil government rather than military affairs." It is certain that when he took his seat at the board of the cabinet council, it was the vigour of thought and perfect command of every subject which came before them, even more than his military fame, which won such general respect, and ultimately raised him, in difficult times, to the highest place in the government. From his earliest youth, his despatches and observations evince a soundness of judgment, a maturity of thought, and an elevation of principle, which we generally look for in vain in persons of the most advanced years and extensive experience ; and which were the more remarkable if, as is commonly said, his amusements at that period were of a much lighter description, and partook more of the gaiety of Caesar's youth than the austerity of Cato's age. But these distractions never affected the solid founda- tions, the deep substratum of his mind ; and we perceive in his despatches, from first to last, unequivocal and frequent proofs of the same constant sense of duty, the same unfailing strength of judgment, the same singleness and patriotism of heart. The vigour and energy of his understanding, how- ever, seems to have increased, rather than diminished, as he grew older ; and at no period so much as in his later years, are such profound and far-seeing observations to be met with, which, in advance of the age in which they were spoken, only come to be fully understood and appreciated in the next. 142 avellixgto:n'. The Duke of Wellington, however, is essentially a man of action. He was born to be the ruler, rather than the instruc- tor of men; he has no poetical imagination, and little turn for abstract speculations or visionary thought. Hence his sway over the great majority of society, in future times, will never equal that of Napoleon, in whom the ardour of poetic fancy was singularly blended with the exactness of mathematical reasoning, and speculation on general subjects possessed as great charms as the pursuits of ambition or the excitement of war. Wellington's maxims and opinions, as will imme- diately appear, are invaluable : but they have all a bearing on practical affairs, and the immediate direction and govern- ment of men. A few great principles of rectitude and morality, applicable alike to nations as to individuals, were firmly fixed in his mind ; and it was in applying them witli undeviating steadiness and unerring sagacity, that his wis- dom, as measured by the event, consists. But he always took a practical view of affairs : he considered them, on every occasion, as the subjects of action, not speculation. He did not think that, because he had taken up one position with one enemy in one campaign, therefore he was bound to take up the same position with another enemy in every future campaign. His great merit consisted in seeing more clearly than other men, at all times, the coming course of events, and shaping his conduct so as to render it as little injurious, or as beneficial as possible, to the cause with which he was intrusted. In one particular only he was always the same, and that was in love to his country : his conduct, variable in other respects, was ever true to the pole-star of duty. Of Wellington's far-seeing sagacity, which almost amounted to prescience, no more remarkable example can be presented than the constant and unchanging firmness with which lie affirmed, after the catastrophe of the Corunna retreat, that the cause of the Peninsula was not only noways hopeless, but that Portugal might be successfully defended by Great Britain against any force which France could bring against it. Few among the elder part of the present genera- tion, by whom that dismal termiuation to all the highly- excited hopes of the nation is recollected, can ever forget the general feeling of despair which seized upon the public mind when the gallant army, once thirty thousand strong, which WELLINGTON. 143 had sailed from England a few months before, returned, a third of its numbers fallen, depressed in spirits, hav- ing lost, like Francis I., all but its honour in that calamitous retreat ; when the hosts of Spain had been dispersed, like chaff before the wind, bj the legions of Napoleon ; when Madrid had fallen, and a few thousand men alone remained to prevent the French eagles being forthwith planted on the towers of Lisbon. The English generals engaged in the combat regarded the cause of Spain as utterly hopeless, and the idea of defending Portugal as too extravagant to be for a moment entertained. Sir John Moore and Sir David Baird had written to Government under this impression, recom- mending that empty transports should be sent to Vigo Bay, to bring away the troops, instead of the thirteen thousand men which had been prepared to reinforce the army. " If the French succeed in Spain,'' said Sir J. Moore, in Novem- ber 1808, "it will be in vain to attempt to resist them in Portugal The Portuguese are without a military force, and, from the experience of their conduct under Sir Arthur Wellesley, no dependence is to he placed on any aid they can give. The British must, in that event, immediately take steps to evacuate the country T'^ There were few men in Britain, at that time, with the disasters of the campaign before their eyes, who probably entertained a different opinion. But what said Wellington a few months after, when no intervening success had occurred to shake the grounds of Sir J. IMoore and Sir D. Baird's opinion^ "Por- tugal may he successfully defended against any force the French could brine: against it ; and the maintenance of that position would be the greatest support to the common cause in Spain^^ It was that opinion which was the foundation of the defence of Portugal, and ultimately the cause of the deliverance of Europe. Like all other men engaged in pubhc life, Wellington had many vexations and mortifications to undergo, owing to the partiality or injustice on the part of Government in promot- ing men of inferior capacity, and unknown to fame, over his head. But nothing was ever able to shake his devotion to * Sir J. Moore to Lord Castlereagh, Nov. 24, 1808. Pari. Deb. f Memorandum on the Defence of Portugal, March 9, 1809. Guewood, iv. 261, and vi. 5. 14-4 WELLINGTON. his country, or make him for a moment entertain the idea which lesser men would at once have embraced, of throwing up his command on receiving such unworthy treatment. When he was first sent to Spain, he receired the command of the expedition at Cork, and he set sail at its head without having received the slightest hint of an intention to super- sede him in the command of it. The first intimation he received that he was to be degraded to a subordinate situation was on the 15th July 1808, when ofi* Mondego Bay, being then informed he was to be superseded by Sir H. Burrard and Sir H. Dalrymple. He immediately wrote to Lord Castlereagh, the minister for foreign affairs, " Pole and Burghersh have apprised me of the arrangements for the future command of the army. All that T can say on this subject is, that, whether I am to command the army or to quit it, I shall do my best to insure its success ; and you may depend upon it that I shall not hmTy the opera- tions, or commence them one moment sooner than they ought to be commenced, in order that 1 may acquire the credit of the success. The Government will determine for me in what way they will employ me hereafter, either here or elsewhere.'''"' When asked by an intimate friend, after his return, how he, who had commanded an army of forty thousand men, and been made a knight of the Bath, and received the thanks of Parliament, could submit to be reduced to the rank of a general of a division of infantry, he replied, " For this reason — I was ' nimukwallah,' as we say in the East ; I have ate the King's salt, and, therefore, I consider it my duty to serve with zeal and promptitude, when or wherever the King or his Government may think fit to employ me." Here was true magnanimity, for it was forgetfulness of self in the cause of duty. Nor did it go without its reward, even in this world. Inferior men, actu- ated by the jealousy which is the invariable mark of little minds, would probably have resigned the command, and retired from public life on so scandalous a slight ; but Well- ington remained constant to liis duty, the battle of Vimeira succeeded, his greatness outgrew competition, silenced envy, and he lived to strike down Napoleon on the field of Waterloo. * GuRWOOD, iv. 43. WELLIXGTOX. 145 If tilis ^vas a memorable instance of tlie singleness of Jieart and devotion to country of the Britisli hero, not less was the invincible firmness with which he adhered to the discharge of his duty, under circumstances of difficulty which would have shaken the resolution of any other man, characteristic of the firmness and strength of his character. Like Marlborough, and, indeed, all other great men, he found that the difficulties with which he had to contend in combating his enemies in front were inconsiderable, com- pared with those which assailed him from the ignorance, selfishness, timidity, and incapacity of those on whom he was obliged to rely to resist their efforts. His winter campaign with the Allies, to hold the confederacy together, generally exceeded in duration, length, and fatigue, his summer campaign with the marshals of Napoleon. The jealousies and incapacity of the Spaniards, the selfishness and timidity of the Portuguese regency, were more formid- able antagonists than either Soult or Marmont. Nor were his difficulties confined to the Allied Powers. Energy and zeal were never wanting, indeed, in the British Govern- ment; but they were too often entirely and deplorably ignorant of military combination, or the measures necessary to insure military success. But what said Wellington at the time when the country was ringing from side to side with the repeated discom- fiture of the Spanish armies; when the Opposition were incessantly proclaiming in and out of Parliament tlie utter insanity of continuing any longer the hopeless contest in the Peninsula, and Ministers even laid upon liim the whole responsibility of bringing away the army in safety from Lisbon '? '" " I coijceiye that the honour and interests of the country require that we should hold our ground here as long as possible ; and, please God, I will maintain it as long as I can ; and / will neither endeavour to shift from my own shoulders the 7-esponsibility for the failure^ by calling for means which I know they cannot give, and which, perhaps, would not add materially to the facility of attaining our object ; nor will I give to Ministers, who are * " The state of opinion in England is very unfavourable to the Peninsula. The Ministers are as much alarmed as the public, or as the Opposition jj^-e^enc? to he ; and they appear to be of opinion that I am inclined to fight a desperate battle which is to answer no purpose. Their instructions are clear enough, and I am ^^•illing to act under them, although they ilirov: upon me the v:hole responsibility of bringing away the army in safety, after staying in the Peninsula till it shall be necessaiy to evacuate it." — WELLi>'GToy, 21st April 1810. Gurwood, vi, 48, 49. YOL. III. K 14G WELLINGTON. not strong, and who feel the delicacy of their situation, an excuse for with- drawing the army from a position which, in my opinion, the honour and interest of the country require that we should maintain as long as possible. I think that if the Portuguese do their duty, we shall have enough to maintain it : if they do not, nothing that Great Britain can afford can save the country ; and if from that cause I fail in saving it, and am obliged to go, I shall be able to carry away the British army."* Here is Wellington painted to tlie very life, and uncon- sciouslj, in the simplicity of his heart, painted by himself: desiring nothing from his Government which he knew they might have a clifficulty in giving him, seeking to relieve himself from no responsibility, singly sustaining a shaking country and sinking Administration, alone holding together a jealous and discordant alliance, and seeking no reward for all his efforts but that which attends the simple discharge of duty. The time has now arrived when in a calm and dispas- sionate retrospect of Wellington's life, we may add to the many instances with which it abounds of the heroic discharge of duty, the manly stand he made against the Reform Bill. It is needless to remind the existing genera- tion what a storm of obloquy his resistance to the popular wishes on this occasion produced; how entirely, for the time, it caused all the great services of the Duke to be forgotten ; how shamefully he was, in consequence, treated by the nation which he had made illustrious, and the people he had saved. It is sufficient to refer to the windows of Apsley House, long barricaded as against the forces of a beleaguer- ing enemy : to the hero himself, torn by a furious mob from his horse, and with difficulty rescued from death, in the streets of London, on the anniversary of the battle of Waterloo, on 18th June 1832. Yet let us examine what the Duke really did sai/, which occasioned all this storm of indignation, and brought to light this hideous display of ingratitude, and see whether there is anything in it at which wisdom would now hesitate, or which faction itself would not admit to be true : — " I am thoroughly convinced that England possesses at this moment a legislature which answers all the good purposes of a legislature in a higher degree than ever has been found to answer in any country in the world ; that it possesses the confidence of the country ; that it deservedly possesses that confidence, and that its decisions have justly the greatest weight and " Wellington to Hon. J. Yilliers, 14th January 1810. WELLINGTON. 147 influence with the people. Nay, my Lords, I will go yet further, and say, that if at this moment I had to form a legislature for any country, particu- larly for one like this, in possession of great property of various desniptions, although, perhaps, I should not form one precisely such as we have, I would endeavour to produce something ivldch would give the same results^ namely, a representation of the people containing a large body of the property of the country, and in which the great landed proprietors have a preponderating influence." — Speech in Parliament, 2d November 1830. Mojcims and Opinions^ pp. 219, 220. This is the literal text of what the Duke of WeUington said on this memorable occasion ; and is there anything in it to which every man of sense, of whatever party or descrip- tion, will not at once subscribe ? Is there any one, now that the perilous experiment has been made, who will dispute that a legislature, to suit the great and varied interests of the empire, must contain " a large body of its property, and that the landed proprietors must have a preponderating influence in it V Where are now the boundless anticipa- tions of social improvement, and deliverance from evil, with which the lono^-continued and vehement discussions on Reform were ushered in 1 Is there any class in the com- munity that has gained the slightest benefit from the much contested change 1 Are the interests of the great and important producing classes, agricultural and manufacturing, better secured or more prosperous than they were under the old constitution '? Are the people more contented, has insurrection been less frequent since the ten-pound franchise was introduced '? Has Ireland been tranquillised by its healing influence ; or has the fierce demand for the Repeal of the Union been allayed by its efi'ect '? Are the manufac- turing classes better satisfied with their lot; and have the heartburnings and jealousy between rich and poor ceased, since so large a portion of the middle classes have been admitted to the representation I Have the colonies been more prosperous than they were before 1 Has Canada always been loyal and quiet ; and is the West Indies, as in days of yore, in Nelson's words, " the right arm of our naval strength" 1 Have the productions of the soil, and the con- sequent export of our manufactures to those once splendid possessions, been increasing since popular passion was per- mitted to carry the legislature by storm, and force on the perilous change of total emancipation 'I Has the East been prosperous ; have our arms experienced no reverse in Central 148 WELLIXGTON. Asia since the days of democratic ascendency began at home '? Are our finances prosperous '? Is the sinking fund preserved inviolate, and daily extinguishing more and more of the national debt, as it did in the days of Pitt and Fox ? Have we succeeded in averting the dreadful evil, the main cause of the destruction of Rome, of a heavy direct taxa- tion in time of peace '? And is the national expenditure amply provided for, as it ^^^as in days of yore, in ordinary times, by the unobserved and unfelt operation of indirect taxation '? These are the questions which history will have to answer in judging of the Duke of Wellington's declara- tion against Reform : and when they are answered, is there any impartial man who will hesitate in awarding to that memorable declaration the praise of prescience and far- seeing sagacity, beyond, perhaps, any other in the whole career of the Duke of Wellington '? That Wellington was a great and successful general, all the world has long known, and France lias had to rue his victorious sword more than that of any other general who has ever wielded one in hostihty against her. But till the publication of his despatches, it was not known how great a fund of wisdom there was in his writings ; how many pro- found and sagacious thoughts had passed through his mind; by what noble and elevated principles his whole life had been regulated. But these thoughts and observations lay buried in the prodigious mass of ten thickly-printed volumes of despatches, in which there was necessarily so much repeti- tion, and so much uniuiportant or uninteresting matter, that few had nerves to read them through, and their high price placed them beyond the reach of the great body of pur- chasers. Great part, also, of the Duke's most valuable opinions and views on political subjects were contained in his parliamentary speeches, and could be rescued from oblivion only by ransacking the interminable volumes of Hansard. A publication, therefore, was greatly wanted which should cull these invaluable legacies of wisdom and virtue from the dross in which they were enveloped, and present them in an abbreviated form, and at a price accessible to the great bulk of the community. Such a pubhcation exists in the work before us, which has been executed by Mr Francis with equal diligence and discrimination. A more WELLINGTONS^ 149 valuable contribution has neyer been made to the cause of poKtical truth, and the best interests of the British Empire. In the grand banquet given to the Duke of Wellington at Dover, in August 1839, Lord Brougham, who was intrusted with his health, thus expressed himself : — " I am asked to propose the health of the illustrious Duke, as if to show that no difference of opinion upon subjects however important, no long course of opposition however contracted upon public principles, not even long inveterate habits of public opposition, are able to stifle tlie natural feelings of our hearts so far as to obscure our reason, or to prevent us from feeling, as we ought, boundless gratitude for boundless merits. Neither can it pluck from our minds that admiration proportioned to the transcendent genius, in peace and in war, of him who is amongst us this day ; neither can it lighten or alleviate the painful, the deep sense, which the untired mind never can get rid of, when it is overwhelmed by a debt of gratitude too boundless to be repaid. Party may do much, but it cannot operate so as to make us forget those services ; it cannot so far bewilder the memory and fever the judgment, and eradicate from our minds those feelings which do us the most honour, and are the most unavoidable. But what else have I to do ? If I had all the eloquence of all the tongues ever attuned to speak, what else could I do ? How could a thousand words of all the names that could be named, speak so powerfully, and even if I spoke with the tongue of an angel — as if I mention one word — Sir Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the hero of a hundred fields, in all of which his banner was raised in triumph ! Who never — bear witness, Europe ! bear witness, Asia ! — advanced but to cover his arms with glory ; the captain who never advanced but to be victorious ; the mightier captain who never retreated, but to eclipse the glory of his advances, by the yet harder task of unwearied patience, indomitable to lassitude — by the inexhaustible resources of transcen- dent skill, showing the wonders, the marvels of a moral courage never yet sub- dued. Despising all who thwarted him with ill-considered advice ; neglect- ing all hostility, so he knew it to be groundless ; laughing to scorn reviling enemies, jealous competitors, lukewarm friends, ay, hardest of all, to neglect despising even a fickle public, he cast his eyes forward as a man might — else he deserved not to command men — cast forward his eye to observe when that momentary fickleness of the people would pass away, knowing that, in the end, the people are ever just to merit." It is difficult to imagine praise higher, and at the same time more discriminate and deserved, than this glowing eulogium. Yet is it not the mere effusion of a warm imagina- tion, heated by the enthusiasm of the moment, and exalted by the presence of the object of admiration, that has expressed itself in similar terms. History has recorded an opinion of the Duke of Wellington not less flattering. It is thus that, far removed from the enthusiasm of banquets, the annalist of the time has written : — " With an army seldom superior in numbers to a single corps of the French marshals ; with troops dispirited by recent disasters, and wholly unaided by practical experience ; without any compulsory law to recruit his ranks, or 150 WELLINGTON. any strong passion for war to supply its want, he was called on to combat successively vast armies perpetually tilled by the terrible powers of the con- scription, composed in great part of veteran soldiers, headed by chiefs who, risen from the ranks, and practically acquainted with the art of war in all its grades, had fought their way from the grenadier's musket to the marshal's baton, and were followed by men who, trained in the same school, were animated by the same ambition. Still more, he was the general of a nation in which the chivalrous and mercantile qualities are strangely blended together ; which, justly proud of its historic glory, is unreasonably jealous of its present expenditure ; which, covetous in war of military renown, is impa- tient in peace of previous preparation ; which starves its establishment when danger is over, and frets at defeat when its terrors are in sight ; which dreams in strife of Cressy and Azincourt, and ruminates at rest on economic reduction. He combated at the head of an alliance formed of heterogeneous states, composed of discordant materials ; in which ancient animosities were hardly forgotten in present danger, or religious divisions by national fervour ; in which corruption often paralysed the arms of patriotism, and jealousy withheld the resources of power. " Nothing but the most consummate prudence, as well as ability in con- duct, could with such means have achieved victory over such an enemy ; but the character of Wellington was singularly fitted for the task. Capable, when occasion required or opportunity was afforded, of the most daring enterprises, he was yet cautious and wary in his general conduct ; prodigal of his own labour, regardless of his own person, he was avaricious only of the blood of his soldiers. Endowed by nature with an indomitable soul, a constitution of iron, he possessed that tenacity of purpose, and indefatigable activity, which is ever necessary to great achievements. Prudent in council, sagacious in design, he was yet prompt and decided in action. No general ever revolved the probable dangers of an enterprise more anxiously before undertaking it ; none possessed in a higher degree the eagle eye, the arm of steel, necessary to carry it into execution. By the steady application of this rare combination of qualities, he was enabled to raise the British mili- tary fame from an unworthy state of depression to an unparalleled pitch of glory ; to educate in presence of the enemy, not only his soldiers in the field, but his rulers in the cabinet ; to silence, by avoiding disaster, the clamour of his enemies ; to strengthen, by progressive success, the ascendency of his friends ; to augment, by the exhibition of its results, the energy of the governments; to rouse, by deeds of glory, the enthusiasm of the people. Skilfully seizing the opportunity of victory, he studiously avoided the chances of defeat ; aware that a single disaster would at once endanger his prospects, discourage his countrymen, and strengthen his opponents, he was content to forego many opportunities of earning fame, and stifle many desires to grasp at glory. Magnanimously checking the aspirations of genius, he trusted for ultimate success rather to perseverance in a wise, than audacity in a daring course. He thus succeeded dm-ing six successive campaigns, with a com- paratively inconsiderable army, in maintaining his ground against the vast and veteran forces of Napoleon ; in defeating successively all his marshals, and baffling successively all his enterprises ; and finally, rousing such an enthusiastic spirit in the British Empire, as enabled its Government to put forth its immense resources on a scale worthy of its present gi'eatness and ancient renown, and terminate a contest of twenty years by planting the British standard on the walls of Paris." * It may readily be discerned from this character, how large a share political wisdom and far-seeing sagacity, as well as indomitable tenacity of purpose, have had in the Duke's * History of Europe, vi. 121, 123. WELLINGTON. 151 military success. In truth, it is there that the secret of his triumphs is to be found ; it is there that the mainspring of his life was placed. His conduct as a general, great and celebrated as it has been, was but a part of those more comprehensive principles which ruled liis universal conduct, which prompted him at every period of his life to set him- self to oppose the prevailing dangers to which his country was exposed, and so frequently rendered him triumphant over them. The heroic devotion, the forgetfulness of self, the love of country, the sense of duty, which we admire in the hero in the lines of Torres Vedras, when combating the corrupt Portuguese regency, subduing the pertinacious jealousy of Spain, or sustaining the sinking resolution of England, have all their counterparts in subsequent times, when, in his long pacific career, he contended with social enemies not less active, allayed jealousies not less irrecon- cileable, averted danoers not less formidable. Even those who differed with him in many particulars of his domestic administration, must admire the uniform integrity of his conduct, the unchanging singleness of his heart, the indo- mitable firmness of liis resolution. Europe has had abundant reason to know the force and formidal3le character of the French army since the Revolu- tion ; but observe how Wellington, when it was at the highest point of its elevation, seized its character and pre- dicted its downfall : — " It may be asked why we should be obliged to spend our money, and why our troops should not go on, as the French do, without pay, provisions, magazines, or anything? The French army is certainly a wonderful machine ; but if we are to form such a one, we must form such a government as exists in France, which can with impunity lose one-half the troops it employs in every campaign, solely by the hardships and privations it imposes upon them. Next, we must compose our army of soldiers drawn from all classes of the population of the country ; from the good and middling, as well in rank as education, as from the bad ; and not, as all other nations do, and we in particular, from the bad only. Thirdly, we must establish such a system of discipline as the French have— a system founded on the strength of the tyranny of the government, which operates upon an army composed of soldiers, the greater part of whom are sober, well-disposed, amenable to order, and in some degree educated. When we shall have done all this, and withal made our armies of the strength of those maintained by the French, we may require them to live as the French do, viz. by the authorised and regular plunder of the country and its inhabit- ants, if any should remain ; and we may expose them to the labour, hard- ships, and privations which the French soldier suffers every day ; and we 152 WELLIXGTOX. must expect the same proportion of loss every campaign, viz. one-half of those who take the field."* No one has in subsequent times more clearly set forth the peculiar dangers, and causes of the almost incredible success, of the French arms since the Revolution than Wellington did, at the height of their power, in this passage. Yet even then, when Austria had recently before sunk under the shock of Wagram, and all Europe, from the walls of Cadiz to the gulf of Finland, obeyed the mandates of Napoleon, he not "only did not despair of setting limits to his power, but clearly foresaw the circumstances which would induce its ruin, in those which caused its present elevation : — '^ I have, however, long considered it probable, that even we should witness a general resistance throughout Europe to the fraudulent and dis- gusting tyranny of Buonaparte, created by the example of what has occurred in Spain and Portugal, and that ice should be actors and advisers in these scenes ; and I have reflected frequently upon the measures which should be pursued to give a chance of success. "Those who embark in projects of this description should be made to understand, or to act as if they understood, that having once drawn the sword they must not return it, till they have completely accomplished their object ; they must be prepared, and must be forced to make all sacrifices to the cause. Submission to military discipline and order is a matter of course ; but when a nation determines to resist the authoritj- and shake off the government of Buonaparte, they must be prepared and forced to sacrifice- the luxuries and comforts of life, and to risk all in a contest which, it should be clearly understood before it is undertaken, has for its object to save all or nothing. " The first measure for a country to adopt is to form an army, and to raise a revenue from the people to defray the expense of an army ; above all, to form a government of such strength as that army and people can be forced by it to perform their duty : this is the rock upon which Spain has split, and all our measures in any other country which should afi"ord hopes of resistance to Buonaparte, should be directed to avoid it. The enthusiasm of the people is very fine, and looks well in print ; but I have never known it produce anything but confusion. In France, what was called enthusiasm was power and tyranny, acting through the medium of popular societies, which have ended by oVerturning Europe, and in establishing the most powerful and dreadfal tyranny that ever existed. In Spain, the enthusiasm of the people spent itself in vivas and vain boasting ; the notion of its existence pre- vented an attempt even to discipline the troops ; and its existence has been alleged ever since as the excuse for the rank ignorance of the ofiicers, and the indiscipline and constant misbehaviour of the troops. " I therefore earnestly recommend you, wherever you go, to trust nothing to the enthusiasm of the people : give them a strong and firm, and, if pos- sible, a good government ; but, above all, a strong one, which shall enforce upon them to do their duty by themselves and their country; and let mea- sures of finance to support an army go hand in hand with measures to raise it. I am quite certain that the finances of Great Britain are more than a match for Buonaparte ; and that we shall have the means of aiding any country that may be disposed to resist his tyranny. But those means are necessarily limited in every country by the difiiculty of procuring specie : * Despatch, Jan. 26. 1811. Maxims and Opinions, 111. WELLIXGTOX. 153 this necessary article can be obtained in suflScient quantities only by the contributions of the people ; although Great Britain can and ought to assist with money, as well as in other modes, every effort of this description, the principal financial as well as military effort ought to be by the people of the resisting country."* Here is the true view both of the power of reA^olutionary France, of the failure of the efforts hitherto raade iu the Peninsula to resist it, and of the only means bj which the deliverance of Europe could ultimately be effected. Well- ington saw clearly that it was not the enthusiasm of the French Revolution, of which so much has been said, whicli had produced its triumphs, but the stern reality of power erected by its influence, which drew forth with unrelenting hand the resources of the country : he saw that it was the want of such a powerful and despotic central authority which caused the Spanish Revolution, nursed amidst equal enthusiasm, fanned by equal fervour, to prove so miserable a failure in resisting the aggression of France. And he pointed out the only true and practicable mode of combat- ing the invasions of Napoleon, which was by forming a powerful central government, to turn to good purpose the burst of enthusiasm which never failed to appear in the people of any country which had been visited by the curse of French oppression, and compel their exertions when the ardour of the moment might be beginning to fail, or the public fervour might be in danger of being lost in imprac- ticable or visionary enterprises. How different was this sound and practical view of the matter from the heated dreams of Mr Frere, which, at the outset of the Spanish war, so far deluded both the Government and people of Great Britain, as to the probable issue of the contest by the mere force of popular enthusiasm ; or the desponding views of Sir John Moore, backed by the whole Opposition party of England, as to the utter impracticability of oppos- ing any effectual resistance on the Continent of Europe to the power of France. Here was confidence without pre- sumption, hope without delusion ; steadiness, because a foun- dation in reason. How completely was the justice of the whole demonstrated by his own successful defence of Por- tugal, and the subsequent glorious efforts of Russia and Germany. * Despatch, Dec. 10, 1811. Maxims and Opinions, 121. 154 WELLIXGTOX. On the nature of the power of revolutionarj France, and the means bj which it had risen to so portentous a height, the Duke early in the contest recorded the following opinions : — " In the early days of the revolutionary war, the French, at the recom- mendation, I believe, of Brissot, adopted a measure which they called a lei-ee en masse, and put every man, animal, and article in their own country in requisition for the service of the armies. This system of plunder was carried into execution by the popular societies throughout the country. It is not astonishing that a nation, among whom such a system was established, should have been anxious to carry on the war beyoud their own frontier: this system both created the desire and afforded the means of success, and with the war they carried wherever they went the system of requisitions ; not, however, before they had, by these and other revolutionary measures, entirely destroyed all the sources of national prosperity at home. " Wherever the French armies have since gone, their subsistence, at least the more expensive article in all armies, and means of transport, have been taken from the country ybr nothing: sometimes, besides subsistence, they have received clothing and shoes ; in other instances, besides those articles, they have received pay ; and from Austria, Prussia, and other parts of Germany and Italy, besides all those articles of supply for their troops, heavy contributions in money for the supply of the treasury of Paris : to this enumeration ought to be added the plunder acquired by the generals, officers, and troops, and it will be seen that the new French system of war is the greatest evil that ever fell on the civilised world. " The capital and industry of France having been destroyed during the Revolution, it is obvious that the government cannot raise a revenue from its inhabitants, adequate to the support of the large force which must be maintained, in order to uphold the authority of the new government, parti- cularly in the newly-conquered and ceded states, and, at the same time, defend the widely-extended frontiers of France from all those whose interest and inclination must lead them to attack it. The French government, there- fore, under whatever form administered, must seek for support for their armies in foreign countries : ivar must he a financial resource; and that appears to me to be the greatest misfortune which the French Revolution has entailed upon the present generation." * This is the true view of the revolution arv power of France, and affords the real and unanswerable vindication of the steady resistance opposed to it by Great Britain. The Opposition in England, and the Liberal party over Europe, during the war, who were secretly inclined to favour the advances of France, because it was founded on popular power, incessantly exclaimed that the war was undertaken and persisted in solely at the instigation, and for the pur- poses, of the Allied Powers ; that it was a crusade of kings against the liberties of mankind. Wellington, on the other hand, saw at the time, what history has since completely * Wellington to Lord Bathurst, Jan. 12, 1812. Maxims and Opinions, 121, 122. T^^ELLIXGTON. 155 demonstrated to have been the fact, that ^ya^ and foreign conquest were to reyolutionarj France a matter not merely of inclination or passion, but of necessity : they were driven across the Rhine, and into a system of aggression, not merely by the ardent and enthusiastic passions of the people, which, highly wrought up by political excitement, could find vent, after the government at home was overthrown, only in foreign conquest, but also, and still more effectually, by the necessities of their situation. Internal industry having been paralysed, domestic capital destroyed, foreign com- merce annihilated by the confiscations of the Revolution, no resource remained to the starving multitudes whom it had warmed into life, but foreign aggression. But if war was undertaken against other states, how was it to be main- tained on the scale requisite to insure success, without an affluent exchequer I And how was that to be obtained out of an impoverished and ruined country, and from a people who looked for a substantial proof of the reality of their emancipation, in a general liberation from taxes and imposts of every kind '? Foreign conquest was thus as indispensable to revolu- tionary France as it was to ancient Rome ; and from the same cause. Its triumphant people were daily looking for a decree similar to that of the Romans, who, after the conquest of Macedonia, proclaimed an eternal liberation from taxes of all kinds to the victorious citizens of the Republic. The "multis utile bellum" was felt as strongly by the government, in the seasonable relief to the exchequer, as by the people in the career of excitement, promotion, and plunder, which it opened to their arms. They spread across the Rhine, as the Americans have done into Texas and Maine, and are doing into Oregon. Every man in the state hoped to gain something by the plunder of the world, and that was an invincible attraction to those who had nothing. Peace was impracticable with such a power : it reserved the most friendly allies only for the melancholy privilege, like Ulysses in the cave of Polyphemus, of being last devoured. And here is to be found the explanation of the remarkable facts so decisively demonstrated by the whole history of the Revolution, that from the time that its arms were first permanently carried by Napoleon into 156 WELLIXGTOX. foreign countries, more than half the supplies for the treasury of Paris were obtained from the contributions levied in foreign countries, and that the most formidable advances of French power were made not during war, but in peace ; and not so much at the expense of powerful and hostile, as of weak and allied states. It was the peculiar and characteristic glory of Welling- ton, on the other hand, that he from beginning to end, and in the midst of privations and difficulties which would have broken down the resolution of any other man, resolutely adhered to the system of maintaining the contest from his own resources, and absolutely repudiated the infamous system of making war maintain war. With how much difficulty this was done, at how great a cost to the national resources, by what incredible financial exertions both on the part of the English general and the Government at home, is proved by innumerable passages of his despatches. So excessive did the strain in consequence become on the British exchequer, that the resolution of the cabinet fairly gave way before it during the disastrous winter of 1811-12, when the North American market was closed to our exports ; and they hinted to Wellington in the spring of the last year, that it would be highly desirable if he could adopt, at least to a certain extent, the system of the enemy, and provide for the cost of the war by contributions levied on its theatre. But Wellington replied, after deprecating any such oppressive system of hostility : — " I shall be sorry if Government should think themselves under the necessity of withdrawing from this country on account of the expense of this contest. From what I have seen of the objects of the French Govern- ment, and the sacrifices they make to accomplish them, I have no doubt that if the British army were for any reason to withdraw from the Peninsula, and the French Government were relieved from the pressure of military operations on the Continent, they would incur all risks to land an army in liis Majesty's dominions. Then, indeed, would commence an expensive contest ; then would his Majesty's subjects discover what are the miseries of war, of which by the blessing of God they have hitherto had no knowledge : and the cultivation, the beauty and property of the country, would be destroyed, whatever might be the result of military operations. God forbid that I should be a witness, much less an actor in the scene ! And I only hope that the King's Government will consider well what I have stated to your lordship ; will ascertain, as nearly as is in their power, the actual expense of employing a certain number of men in this country, beyond that of employing them at home or elsewhere ; and will keep up their force here on such a footing as will at all events secure their possession, without wellingto:n. 157 keeping the transports, if it does not enable their commander to take advantage of events, and assume the offensive."* Nor was it only in Spain and Portugal — that is, allied states — that Wellington adhered ^vith unshaken constancy to the system of carrying on war from his own resources, and paying for everything without burdening the inhabitants of the theatre of war, or levying contributions on the alHed states. He did the same in France, as soon as he carried his victorious arms into its territory ; and he won the hearts of its inhabitants thereby, as much as tlie imperial generals lost them, by the exactions they now made on their own people. No sooner did he enter tlie territory of the Great Nation than he issued a proclamation, in which he said : — "The officers and soldiers of the army must recollect that their nations are at Avar with France solely because its ruler will not allow them to be at peace with him ; and they must not forget that the worst evils suffered by the enemy, in his profligate invasion of Spain and Portugal, have been occasioned by the irregularities of his soldiers, and their cruelties, authorised and encouraged by their chiefs, towards the unfortunate and peaceable inhabitants of the country. To revenge this conduct on the peaceful inhabit- ants of France w^ould be unmanly, and unworthy of the nations to whom the commander of the forces now addresses himself, and at all events would be the occasion of similar and worse evils to the army at large, than those which the enemy's army have suffered in the Peninsula. The rules, therefore, which have been hitherto observed, in requiring and taking, and giving receipts for supplies from the country, are to be continued in the villages in France." t And when he entered the north of France, after the battle of Waterloo, he was equally rigorous in preserving discipline, and paying for everything required for the army : — " As the army is about to enter the French territory," said he, " the troops of the nations at present under the command of Field-marshal the Duke of Wellington must recollect that their respective sovereigns are in alliance with the King of France, and that France, therefore, should be treated as a friendly country. It is therefore required that nothing should be taken, either by officers or soldiers, for which payment is not made. The commis- sioners of the army will provide for the troops in the usual manner, and it is not permitted either to officers or men to extort contributions." J Such was the effect of these proclamations, and of the vigorous steps taken to compel obedience to them, and preserve the strictest discipline, that supplies of every sort flowed into the English camp, in the invasion both of the * Wellington to the Earl of Liverpool, March 23, 1811. Gurwood, vii. 380. + Proclamation by Wellington, Oct. 8, 1813. Gurwood, xi. 169. X Wellington's General Orders, June 20, 1815. Gurwood, xii. 493. 158 WELLINGTON. south and uortli of France, as regularly as they did into Paris or London. " It is not to be told," said Soult, in his despatch to Napoleon, " what mischief this system of the English general has done us. Every peasant wishes to he under his protection." It is this circumstance which gives the campaigns and military measures of Wellington their great and lasting interest: it is their moral character which stamped upon them immortality. Not only was he intrusted with a noble cause, but he defended it by noble deeds. Repudiating the worldly doctrine, that the end will justify the means, he adhered to the opposite rule, that evil is not to be done that good may come of it. He preferred to bear obloquy, to submit to privation, to be cramped in resources, to be fettered in action, to reaping, when he might have done so, the fruits of injustice. He toiled on through poverty, hardship, and suffering, while his enemies were rioting in the fruits of rapine. He was content to be poor as a general as well as an individual, so as he was just. He did to others as he would have been done by. Intrusted with the defence of order, morality, and religion, he combated with the arms of justice alone. Long and severe in consequence was his trial, but great and glorious was his reward. He found it in the smiling and prosperous realms which he had protected by his arms; he found it in the wasted and desolate kingdoms which he wrested from the enemy ; he found it in the unanimous horror which the injustice of his opponents produced; he found it in the universal gratitude of the world at their deliverance by his arms. Observe with how piercing an eye, and grapliic a hand, Wellington, after the first capture of Paris in 1814, painted the dreadful and lasting social as well as political evils which had been bequeathed to it by the Revolution : evils so far from being worn out, that they are only in their commence- ment : — " Cette malheureuse Revolution et ses suites out ruine le pays de fond en comble. Tout le monde est pauvre, et ce qui est pis, leurs institutions empechent qu'aucune famille devienne riclie et puissante. Tous doiveut done necessairement viser a remplir des emplois publics, non comme autrefois pour riionneur de les reniplir, niais pour avoir de quoi vivre. Tout le monde done cherche de Temploi public. Buonaparte laissa une armee d'un million d'hommes en France, outre les officiers prisonuiers en Angletcrre et en WELLIXGTOX. 159 Russie. Le roi ue peut pas en mainteuir le quart. Tons ceux non employes sont mecontens. Buonaparte gouvernait directement la moitie de TEurope, et indirectement presque I'autre moiiie. Pour des causes a present bieu developpees et connues, il employait une quantite infinie de personnes dans ses administrations ; et tons ceux employes ou dans les administrations exterieures, civiles, ou dans les administrations militaires des armees, sont renvoyes, et beaucoup de ceux employes dans les administrations interieures. A cette classe norabreuse ajoutez la quantite d'emigres et de personnes rentres, tons mourant de faim, et tons convoitant de Feraploi public afin de pouvoir vivre ; et vous trouverez que plus de trois quarts de la classe de la societe non employee a la main-d"oeuvre ou a labourer la terre, sont en etat d'indigence, et par consequence mecontens. Si vous considerez bien ce tableau, qui est la stricte verite, vous y verrez la cause et la nature du danger du jour. L'armee, les officiers surtout, sont mecontens. lis le sont pour plusieurs raisons inutiles a detailler ici ; mais ce mecontentement pourra se vaincre en adoptant des mesures sages pour ameliorer I'esprit." * The historian of the RestoratioD, and its fall, ^vill do well to ponder on this brief but comprehensiA^e passage. No- where else in an equal space will he find an equally con- vincing and lucid description of the difficulties, in truth insurmountable, which attended the Restoration. Thej arose out of the entire destruction of the whole former foundation of society in France by the Revolution, and the reconstruction of the nation upon a foundation brilliant and dazzling, but of all others the most perilous — viz., on the plunder^ and oppression of other states. When the means of carrying on this iniquitous system of spoliation and injury were taken away, by the French armies being driven into their own territory, and their authority circumscribed by its limits, misery and penury at once became general, and dis- content universal. It was like the curse suddenly shooting into the brain of Ladurlad, the moment he descended from the enchanted precincts of Mount Meru. All this discon- tent, vexation, and disappointment, was visited on the head of Louis XVIII. and the government of the Restoration, merely because they had the misfortune to be the public guardians at tlie time when the suffering was felt. The French were discontented at them, as a spoilt child is with its nurse, because it happens to be under his charge when its playthings are taken away. That was the real cause of the calamitous revolt of the Hundred Days : it was the cause of the equally calamitous Revolution of the Barricades : and when the sagacious intellect of Louis Philippe has ceased to direct the overgrown multitude of needy aspirants, it will * Wellington to Dumouriez, Nov. 20, 1S14. Gur"^'00D, xi. i^Q. 160 WELLINGTON. again inyolve France in convulsion, and Europe in war and devastation.'' " I would sacrifice Gwalior, or every portion of India, ten times over, to preserve our credit for scrupulous good faith, and the advantages and honour we gained by the late war and the peace ; and we must not fritter them away in arguments drawn from overstrained principles of the law of nations, which are not understood in this country. What brought me through the many difficulties in the war, and the negotiations for peace ? The British good faith, and nothing else."t What a testimony to the cardinal point of Indian, as of all other really wise and profound policy, by the conqueror of Assaye ! But at the same time, no one more clearly saw, or has more clearly expressed, the vital distinction between Asiatic and European politics, or the absurdity of applying our European rules regarding state policy and the law of nations to a cluster of communities, where neither the one nor the other is in the slightest degree understood, but one, and one only maxim is invariably followed, which is, to yield to force. Speaking in 1804 on this subject, he says : — " The Asiatic governments do not acknowledge, and hardly know of the rules and systems which have long been observed in Europe. Their govern- ments are arbitrary ; the objects of their policy are always shifting ; they have no regular or established system, the object of which is to protect the weak against the strong. On the contrary, the object of each of them sepa- rately, and of all collectively, is to destroy the weak. And if by chance they should, by a sense of common danger, be induced for a season to combine their efforts for their mutual defence, the combination lasts only as long as it is attended with success : the first reverse dissolves it; and, at all events, it is dissolved long before the danger ceases, the apprehension of which ori- ginally caused it. The Company's government in India depends much on its reputation ; and although it does not do so entirely, as contradistinguished from its real force, yet it is particularly desirable for a government situated as it is, never to engage in any project, the success of which may appear even doubtfid. It is bound by acts of Parliament not to undertake any war of aggression, and not to conclude any but defensive alliances. These considera- tions prove that no permanent system can be adopted in India which shall preserve the weak against the strong, or keep all for any length of time in their relative situations, and the whole in peace. One power is indispen- sable, which, either by the superiority of its strength, its military system, or its resources, shall preponderate, and be able to protect all." J How just and prophetic a view, formed forty 3'ears ago, of the peculiar circumstances of the Indian Peninsula, and the necessities of Indian policy, which subsequent experience has done so much to confirm ! * Written in 1843. The Revolution and disastrous wars of 1848 were the accomplishment of this prediction. t Despatch, March 17, 1804. Maxims and Opinions, p. 87. X Wellington to Lord Wellesley, July 19, 1804. Maxims and Opinions, p. 88. WELLINGTON. 161 The despatches of the Duke of Wellington since 1815 have not been published, and probably will not be so during the lifetime of the present generation, as they relate of course to political and domestic concerns only. We are deprived, therefore, during the momentous period of Bri- tish history which has since intervened, of the inestimable advantage of reading, as it were, his mind, in the confiden- tial and unreserved communication of his ideas on passing events, in correspondence with his intimate friends. It may confidently be anticipated, that when his correspond- ence for that period comes to be published, embracing his views on so many changes, vital to the history and future fate of England — the Roman Catholic Relief Bill, the Reform Bill, Negro Emancipation, Free Trade and Protection, the Affghanistan and Chinese wars — it will exceed even the despatches relating to the war in interest and importance. At present we are confined on these interesting topics to selections from the Duke's parlia- mentary speeches, in which, though the same vigour of thought and brevity of expression are always conspicuous, we are not equally sure of finding the real opinions of the man, from the necessity under which the Minister often laboured of expressing the opinions of the cabinet, not his own ; and the restraints under which the statesman was always laid, of using measured and often simulate expres- sions in parliamentary debate. Yet do the extracts from these speeches compose a rich fund of political wisdom, and convey as great an impression of the varied capacity of the Duke's mind ; illustrating the truth of Johnson's saying, that intellectual strength is capable of being applied to any subject to which the will directs it. " The theory of all legislation is founded in justice, and if we could be certain that legislative assemblies would on all occasions act according to the principles of justice, there would be no occasion for those checks and guards which we have seen established under the best systems. Unfortu- nately, however, experience tells us, that legislative assemblies are swayed by the fears and passions of individuals : when unchecked, they are tyranni- cal and unjust ; nay more, it unfortunately happens too frequently, that the most tyrannical and unjust measures are the most popular. Those measures are frequently popular which deprive rich and powerful individuals, under the pretence of public advantage ; and I tremble for a country in which, as in Spain, there is no barrier for the preservation of private property, except- ing the justice of a legislative assembly possessing supreme powers."* * Despatch, Jan. 29, 1813. Macdras and Opinions, 124. VOL. III. L 162 WELLINGTON. This paragraph, written in reLation to the popular legis- lature in 1813, at Cadiz, which was intriguing with Napo- leon, and so nearly made shipwreck of the cause of Spanish independence, as it unquestionably has of that of Spanish freedom, contains a key to the pohtical opinions of the Duke on all the great questions of social contest which afterwards came under his consideration in the internal government of Great Britain. Distrust of patriotic professions — too often, as Johnson said, " tlie last refuge of a scoundrel ;" a thorough perception of the truth, that selfishness is the mainspring of human actions ; a strong sense of the necessity of checks to cover this universal and indelible grasping propensity in all classes, formed his ruling principles. It does not appear that he possessed any very extensive historical information ; indeed his active life, constantly in harness from the time he left school, rendered such acquisition almost impossible ; but he possessed that strong sense and intuitive sagacity, which so often is more valuable to its possessor than pro- found learning ; and which enabled him, from the observa- tion of the events around him, and in which he bore a part, to arrive at the same conclusions which others would do from the most extensive course of historical reading and reflection. On the much-debated question of Interference, or Non- interference, in the internal concerns of another state, he said — - " Much has been said here and elsewhere, at various times, on the question of interference by one state in the concerns of another. I do not admit the right of one country to interfere with the internal affairs of another country, except when the law of necessity or great political inter- ests may render interference absolutely necessary ; but I say that non- interference is the rule, and interference the exception : this is the ground of the policy on which this country acts. She disdains a daily interference with the concerns of other countries."* It is impossible to express more clearly, in a few words, the ruling principle of British policy, as called into action during the whole course of the revolutionary war. Wellington's opinions were always very strongly expressed on the paramount necessity of protection to agriculture in the British Empire; and of the ruinous effects which would result to all classes if the agricultural interests were to be * Speech in Lords, Feb. 11, 1828. Maxims and Opinions, 142. WELLIXGTOX. 163 sacrificed to the clamours for temporary clieap bread on the part of the other classes of the cooimunitj. He thus ex- pressed himself in the great debate which took place on the subject in 1828 :— "The number of individuals, either in Parliament or out of it, who main- tain that foreign corn should be altogether duty-free, is very small indeed. Some persons undoubtedly think that a small fixed duty ought to be im- posed ; and if such 2, fixed duty were imposed, it should certainly be a very small one ; but all agree that protection of some sort or another is indis- pensable. This opinion is founded on the great burden of taxation upon the country generally, as well as the particular burdens on land ; and on the fact that the labouring classes here are better fed, clothed, and lodged, than the people of the same class in other countries. It is admitted by those who are in favour of a fixed low duty, that their expectation and intentions are, that the poorer lands of this country which have been brought into cultiva- tion by the application of great labour, and the expenditure of a large amount of capital, should be at once thrown out of cultivation; and even the richer lauds would become comparatively unprofitable, in consequence of the application of their system. But this country has been brought to its present high state of cultivation, and consequent internal wealth, by the fostering protection which has invariably been given to agriculture, and which has induced gentlemen to lay out their capital in redeeming waste lands and bringing them into cultivation. The result of such a system would be to throw out of cultivation the land thus redeemed from waste, to reduce the extent of cultivation of the richer lands, and consequently to lessen the productive power of the country, and finally to throw us for sub- sistence and support on foreign nations. " I beg your lordships to reflect on the consequences which must result, if the Powers from whose dominions these resources are generally drawn, should think proper to lay a heavy tax on the export of such corn, or on its transit from one country "^to another. What would be the result of such a measure to this country — a measure too, which foreign states might, in cer- tain circumstances, be perfectly justified in adopting? But supposing such moderation on the part of those states, that they should continue to allow us to draw our supplies from their dominions, yet you must recollect that this country would be constantly, under the proposed system of a fixed duty, placed in the precarious state in which it found itself in years of famine and scarcity, and would be exposed to the highest prices for wheat. The cost of production, for example, in Poland, would not be increased ; but the prices would be regulated here, not by the cost of production there, hut hy the scarcity price of this country^ and by the profits of all those con- cerned in the contemplated importation of corn. Under all these circum- stances, a low fixed duty would not be productive of a diminution ; on the contrary, it would in the end lead to an augmentation of price. But even if it were otherwise, would it be proper to adopt such a measure in reference to its effects in other respects? Look to Ireland, and consider Avhat must be the inevitable results if agriculture be not encouraged in that country ; a country which last year supplied Great Britain with 2,000,000 quarters of grain. What must be the effects of cutting off from that country nearly the only source of industry, the only manufacture, with one exception, which it possesses? " But I speak not with reference to Ireland alone, but with reference to this country. The gentlemen of this country have, by the extent of their capital and" the labour they have employed upon their estates, raised the agriculture of the kingdom to its present prosperous condition ; and nothing 164 WELLINGTON. would be more unjust than to take from tliem that protection by which they have been enabled to bring cultivation to the state in which it now is, and to deprive them of those profits which are so justly their due, on account of the capital laid out by them. The merchant, the manufacturer, the poor, the whole public, are interested in the maintenance of the independent affluence of the nobility and gentry of the country ; and the Government are interested in supporting their influence, on account of the assistance which has always been derived from them in every branch of internal government, and on account of the support they have afforded to Govern- ment under every circumstance. If it were in my power to make corn cheaper by diminishing the protection which the landed gentry have always received, I would not do it at the expense of Ireland, and of the evils which it must inflict upon the essential interests of this country."* Lucid and forcible as these arguments are, thej are by no means the strongest which can be advanced upon this all-important subject. Subsequent experience, and the more extensive statistical returns and researches of later times, have now established the vital facts — 1. That the monetary system of the country, as established by the acts of 1819 and 1845, is dependent for its very existence upon the pre- vention of any considerable importation of foreign grain; and, 2. Tliat the injury done to our manufactiiring interests, by throwing any considerable portion of our territory out of grain cultivation, would be at least ten times greater than the good derived from the extension of the markets for our manufactures in foreign grain-growing states. The reason of the first is, that as tlie countries wliich supply us with grain have all adopted hostile tariffs against our manufac- tures, which experience shows are only made the more rigid the more we relax our commercial system, corn from abroad can be bought only with gold or silver; and thus a large importation of grain is immediately followed by a drain of the precious metals, a contraction of credit, and general shock to credit and commercial industry through the country. The dreadful and long-continued commercial distress in Great Britain, from 1839 to 1843, during four bad seasons, when the importation of grain was large, so fatal to a large part of the industry of the country, was chiefly owing to this cause. The reason of the second is to be found in the fact, that the nations wlio principally supply us with grain — Prussia, Poland, and Russia — have loaded oar manufactures with such lieavy duties, and their rural population is in so indigent a state, that they do not consume, per head, as * Speech in Lords, March 21, 1828. Mcuviins and Ojjinions, 146, 148. WELLINGTON. 165 many pence worth of our manufactures, as the British labourer consumes pounds.* It would be a poor consola- tion to the British manufacturers, when labouring under the paralysis of the home-market for manufactures, consequent on the ruin of a large part of our annual income derived from land, to tell them that though they had destroyed a million of agricultural labourers at home, who consumed £7 a-head worth of their manufactures, they had called into existence an equal number of serfs in Poland or the Ukraine, who consumed 7d. per head. On Roman Catholic Emancipation, before it was made a Government measure, the following decided opinion was exj)ressed by the Duke in x\pril 1828 : — " There is no person in this house whose feelings and sentiments, after long consideration, are more decided than mine are with respect to the subject of the Roman Catholic claims ; and I must say that, until I see a very great change in that question^ I certainly shall continue to oppose it.'''] The '' veri/ great change'' here alluded to, as the only circumstance which could induce Wellington to alter his opinion on Catholic Emancipation, was its being taken up hy Government as a Government question; and so he explained the matter wlien he came to support the Catholic Relief Bill as prime minister, in March 1829. The grounds of this change were thus stated by the noble Duke, which we shall give in his own words, without adding any com- ments of our own. Hitherto, at least, the result has done anything rather than support its expediency. " If I had been going to propose a measure which would introduce a pre- dominant Catholic power into Parliament, I should then be doing that which is clearly inconsistent with the constitution. But I am not going to do any such thing : there are degrees of power, at least. Will any man venture to aflSrm that Catholic power does not at present exist, either here or in Ire- land ? I will address myself more particularly to noble lords who are so pointedly opposed to me, and I will ask them whether Roman Catholic British Exports to, Proportion per , Population in 1836. in 1836. bead. Russia, .... 60,000,000 £1,722,433 £0 81 Prussia, .... 14,000,000 160,472 3^ Sweden, .... 3,000,000 113,308 9 Home-market, Britain, 26,000,000 133,000,000 5 10 British West Indies, . 900,000 3,786.000 3 12 Australia, .... 100,000 1,130,000 11 13 — Pokter's PaW. TaWes,1836. t Lords, April 28, 1828. Maxims and Opinions, 158. 166 welliin'gtox. power was not introduced into Ireland by measures of their own? Did not some noble lords exert themselves to the very utmost to produce that power, which has now rendered a measure like that which I have announced to Parliament absolutely necessary? As such is the case, I implore noble lords to look at the situation of the country, and the state of society which it has produced ? Whether it has been brought about by the existence of these disabilities, or by the Catholic Association, I shall not say ; but this I will say, that no man who has looked at the state of things for the last two years, can proceed longer upon the old system, in the existing condi- tion of Ireland, and of men's opinions on the subject, both in that country and this. My opinion is, that it is the wish of the majority of the people that this que^stion should be settled one way or other. It is upon this principle that I and my colleagues have determined to bring it before Par- liament."* The Duke's strenuous and uuconipromising resistance to the Reform Bill is well known ; as Ayell as his celebrated question, " How, if this bill passes, is the King's government to be carried on'?" Probably there has been no Adminis- tration since the completion of that great organic change which has not felt in their full bitterness the truth of these words. The future history of England, it is to be feared, will be little more than a commentary on their justice. Observe in what pregnant words Wellington, in the very outset, predicted its effects : — " Throughout the Avhole empire, persons in the lowest condition of life, liable to, and even existing under, pernicious influences, are to have votes ; or in other words, are to exercise political power. Persons in those stations do exercise political power already ; but in a few places, in larger masses, preponderating over the other classes of society. What must we expect when these lower classes preponderate everywhere ? We know what sort of representatives are returned by the places I have described : what are we to expect when the whole will be of the same description ? We hear some- times of radical reform ; and the term applies to universal suffrage, annual parliaments, and their consequences. But I declare that, looking at these changes pervading every part of the representation, root and branch — destroying or changing everything Avhich has existed, even to the relative numbers of the representatives from the three kingdoms, fixed by treaty, I should call this a radical reform, rather than a reform of any other descrip- tion. I cannot but consider that the House of Commons returned by it will be a democratic assembly of the worst description ; and that radical reform, vote by ballot, and all the evil consequences to be expected from the deli- berations of such an assembly, must follow from its establishment. I entreat your lordships to pause before you agree to establish such a system in your country." f May God in his mercy avert these anticipated evils from this country ! But is there any man now bold enough to affirm that the Duke of Wellington in this instance is not to turn out in the end a true prophet 1 * Lords, Feb. 5, 1829. Maxims and Opinions, 155, 156. t Lords, Oct. 4, 1831. Maxims and Opinions, 247. WELLINGTON. 167 The intellectual character of Napoleon and Wellington are singularly in unison with tlie parts they were respectively called to play on the great theatre of the world. No man ever surpassed the French Emperor in the clearness of his ideas, or the stretch of his glance into the depths of futurity. But he was often misled by the vigour of his conceptions, and mistook the dazzling brilliancy of his own genius for the steady light of truth. With less ardour of imagination, less originality of thought, Wellington had incomparably more justness of judgment, and a far greater power of dis- criminating error from truth. The young and the ardent, who have life before them, will ever turn to the St Helena Memoirs for the views of a mind of the most profound and original cast, on the most important subjects of human thought. The mature and experienced, who have known its vicissitudes, and had experience of its errors, will rest with more confidence on the " Maxims and Opinions" of the Duke of Wellington, and marvel at the numerous instances in which his instinctive sagacity beheld the shadow of com- ing events amidst the clouds with which he was surrounded. No one ever read the speculations of the French Emperor without admiration at the originality of his ideas, and the originality of his conceptions ; none can peruse the maxims of the English general without closing the book almost at every page to meditate on the wisdom and justice of his opinions. The genius of the former shared in the fire and animation of Homer's imagination ; the mind of the latter exhibited the depth and solidity of Bacon's judgment. But it was in the prevailing moral principles by which they were regulated, that the distinctive cliaracter of their minds was most strikingly evinced. Singleness of heart was the characteristic of the British hero ; a sense of duty his ruling principle. Ambition actuated the French conqueror ; a thirst for glory was his invariable motive. The former proceeded on the belief that the means, if justifiable, would finally work out the end ; the latter, on the maxim that the end would in every case justify the means. The one exhibited the most shining example of splendid talents, devoted to temporal ambition; the other, the noblest instance of moral influence directed to exalted purposes. The for- mer thought only in peace of accumulating the resources of 168 WELLIXGTOX. future war ; the latter sought only in war the means of securing future peace, and iinallj sheathing the sword of conquest. Napoleon placed himself at the head of Europe, and desolated it for fifteen years with his warfare : Europe placed Wellington at the head of its armies, and he gave it thirty years of unbroken peace. The former was in the end led to ruin while blindly following the meteor of worldly greatness ; the latter was unconsciously led to final great- ness while only following the star of public duty. Wellington was a warrior, but he was so only to become a pacificator : he has seen shed the blood of men, but it was only to stop the shedding of human blood : he has borne aloft the sword of conquest, but it was only to plant in its stead the emblems of mercy : — '" " PulcLrum eminere est inter illustres viros ; Consulere patriae ; parcere aflQictis ; fera Csede abstiuere ; tempus atque irse dare, Orbi qmetem, sseculo pacem suo. Hsec summa Virtus : jDctitur hac eoelum via." * Some of these preceding sentences have been engrossed in the Character of AVelHngton at the close of the Waterloo chapter in the History of Europe ; but they ai-e here retained, as not less applicable to the present subject. HUMBOLDT [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, November 1845] The Russian Emperor, who unquestionably has the power of licensing or prohibiting any of his subjects to travel at his own pleasure, is said to concede the liberty only to the men of intelligence and ability in his dominions : tlie fools are all obliged to remain at home. Hence the high reputa- tion w^hich the Muscovites enjoy abroad, and the frequent disappointment which is felt by travellers of other nations, when they visit their country. It is evident, from the character of the books of travels which every spring issue from the London press, with a few honourable exceptions, that no such restraining power exists in the British domi- nions. We have no individuals or particular works in view in these observations. We speak of things in general. If any one doubts their truth, let him inquire how many of the numberless Travels which annually issue from the British press are ever sought after, or heard of, five years after their publication. Our annual supply of ephemeral travels is far inferior in point of merit to the annual supply of novels. This is the more remarkable, because travels, if written in the right spirit, and by persons of capacity and taste, are among the most delightful, and withal instructive, species of composition of which literature can boast. They are so, because by their very nature they take the reader, as well as the writer, out of the sphere of every-day observation and commonplace remark. This is an immense advantage ; so great indeed, that, if made use of with tolerable capacity, it should give works of this sort a decided superiority in point of interest and utility over all others, excepting History and the higher species of Romance. 1 70 HUMBOLDT. Commonplace is the bane of literature, especially in an old and civilised state ; monotony, the thing to be princi- pally dreaded. The very air is filled with ordinary ideas. General education, mnyersal reading, unhappily make mat- ters worse : they tend only to multiply the echoes of the original report : a new one has scarcely any chance of being heard amidst the ceaseless reverberation of tlie old. Tlie more ancient a nation is, the more liable is it to be over- wlielmcd by this dreadful evil. The Byzantine empire, during a thousand years of civilisation and opulence, did not produce one work of original thought : five hundred years after the light of Athenian genius had been extinguished, the schools of Greece were still pursuing the beaten paths, and teachinoj the doctrines of Plato and Aristotle. It is the peculiar and prodigious advantage of travelling, that it counteracts this woful and degrading tendency, and by directing men's thoughts, as well as their steps, into foreign lauds, has a tendency to induce into their ideas a portion of the variety and freshness which characterise the works of nature. Every person knows how great an advantage this proves in society. All must have felt what a relief it is to escape from the eternal round of local concerns or county politics, of parish grievances or neighbouring railroads, with which in every-day life we are beset, to the conversation of a person of intelligence who has A^sited foreign lands, and can give to the inquisitive at home a portion of the new ideas, images, and recollections with which his mind is stored. How, then, has it happened, that the same acquaintance with foreign and distant countries, which is universally felt to be such an advantage in conversation, is attended with such opposite effects in literature % — and that, while our travellers are often the most agreeable men in company, they are beyond all question the dullest in com- position % Much of this extraordinary and woful deficiency, we are persuaded, is owing to the limited range of objects to which the education of the young of the higher classes is so exclu- sively directed in Oxford and Cambridge. Greek and Latin, Aristotle's logic and classical versification, quadratic equa- tions, conic sections, the differential calculus, are very good things ; and we are well aware that it is by excellence in HUMBOLDT. lyl them that the highest honours in these seminaries of learn- ing can alone be attained. Thej are essential to the fame of a Parr or a Porson, a Herschel or a Whe^yell ; but a very different species of mental training is required for adyantageous travelling. Men will soon find that neither Greek prose nor Latin prose, Greek verse nor Latin verse, will avail them when they come to traverse the present states of the world. The most thorough master of the higher mathe- matics will find his knowledge of scarcely any avail in Italy or Egypt, or the Alps or the Andes. These acquisitions are doubtless among the greatest triumphs of the human under- standing ; and they are calculated to raise a few, perhaps one in a hundred, to distinction in classical or scientific pursuits ; but upon the minds of the remaining ninety-nine, they pro- duce no sort of impression. Nature simply rejects tliem : they are not the food which she requires. They do not do much mischief to such persons in themselves ; but they are of incalculable detriment by the time and the industry which they absorb to no available purpose. Ten years of youth — the most valuable and important period of life — are wasted in studies which, to nineteen-twentieths of the persons engaged in them, are of no use whatever in future years. Thus our young men, of the highest rank and best con- nexions, are sent out into the world without any ideas or information which can enable them to visit foreign countries with advantage. Need we wonder that, when they come to write and publish their travels, they produce such a woful brood of ephemeral bantlings V'' The reaction against this enormous evil in a different class of society, has produced another set of errors in education — of an opposite description, but perhaps still more fatal to the formation of the mental character, which is essential to the useful or elevatino^ observation of foreio-n countries. The com- mercial and middle classes of society, educated at the London University, or any of the numerous academies which have sprung up in all parts of the country, have gone into the other extreme. Struck with the uselessness, to the great bulk of students, of the classical minutiee required at one of * "We lately heai^d of a young man, who had gone through the examination at Cambridge ^^■ith distinction, inquiring, 'Svhether the Greek church tcere Chris- tians?" What sort of a traveller would he make in the East or Eussia? 172 HUMBOLDT. the universities, aucl the mathematical depth deemed indispen- sable at the other, thej have turned education into an entirely different channel. Nothing was deemed worthy of serious attention, except ^Yhat led to some practical object in life. Education was considered by their founders as merely a step to making money. Science became a trade — a mere hand- maid to art. Mammon was all in all. Their instruction was entirely utilitarian. Mechanics and Medicine, Hydrau- lics and Chemistry, Pneumatics and Hydrostatics, Anatomy and Physiology, constituted the grand staples of their edu- cation. What they taught was adapted only for profes- sional students. One would suppose, from examining their course of study, that all men were to be either doctors or surgeons, apothecaries or druggists, mechanics, shipwrights, or civil engineers. No doubt we must have such persons ; no doubt it is indispensable that places of instruction should exist in which they can learn their various and highly impor- tant avocations ; but is that the school in which the enlarged mind is to be formed, the varied information acquired, the appreciation of the grand and the beautiful imbibed, which are essential to an accomplished and really useful writer of travels '? Sulphuric acid and Optics, Anatomy and Mechanics, will do many things ; but they will never make an observer of Nature, a friend of Man, a fit com- mentator on the world of God. Persons of really cultivated minds and enlarged views will probably find it difficult to determine which of these opposite systems of education is the best calculated to attain what seems the grand object of modern instruction, the cramping and limiting the human mind. But without entering upon this much-disputed point — upon which much is to be said on both sides, and in which each party will perhaps be found to be in the right when they assail their opponents, and in the wrong when they defend themselves — it is more material to our present purpose to observe that both are equally fatal to the acquisition of the varied infor- mation, and the imbibing of the refined and elegant taste, which are essential to an accomplished writer of travels. Only think what mental qualifications arc required to form such a character ! An eye for the sublime and the beauti- ful, the power of graphically describing natural scenery, a HUMBOLDT. 173 vivid perception of the peculiarities of national manners, habits, and institutions, will at once be acknowledged to be the first requisites. But in addition to this, ho^y much is necessary to make a work which shall really stand the test of time, in the dehneation of the various countries of the world, and the existing state of their inhabitants ! How many branches of knowledge are called for, how many sources of information required, how many enthusiastic pur- suits necessary, to enable the traveller worthily to discharge his mission ! Eyes and no Eyes are nowhere more conspicuous in human affairs ; and, unhappily, eyes are never given but to the mind which has already seen and learned much. An acquaintance with the history of the country and the leading characters in its annals, is indispensable to enable the traveller to appreciate the historical associations con- nected with the scenes ; a certain degree of familiarity with its principal authors, to render him alive to that noblest of interests, that arising from the recollection of Genius and intellectual Achievement. Without an acquaintance with political economy and the science of government, he will be unable to give any useful account of the social state of the country, or to furnish the most valuable of all information, that relating to the institutions, the welfare, and the happiness of man. Statistics form almost an indispensable part of every book of travels which professes to communicate information ; but mere statistics are little better than unmeaning figures, if the generalising and philosopliical mind is wanting, which, from previous acquaintance with the sub- jects on which they bear, and the conclusions which it is of importance to deduce from them, knows what is to be selected and what laid aside from the mass. Science, to the hio'hest class of travellers, is an addition of the utmost moment ; as it alone can render their observations of use to that most exalted of all objects, an extension of the boun- daries of knowledge, and an enlarged acquaintance with the laws of nature. The soul of a poet is indispensable to form the most interesting species of travels — a mind, and still more a heart, capable of appreciating the grand and the beautiful in Art and in Nature. The eye of a painter and the hand of a draughtsman are equally important to enable him to observe with accuracy the really interesting features 1 74 HUMBOLDT. of external things, and convey, bj faithful and graphic description, a correct impression of what he has seen to the mind of the reader. Such are the qualifications necessary for a really great traveller. It may be too much to hope to find these ever united in one individual ; but the com- bination of the majority of them is indispensable to distinc- tion or lasting fame in this branch of literature. Compare these necessary and indispensable qualifications for a great traveller with those which really belong to our young men who are sent forth from our universities or academies into the world, and take upon tliemselves to com- municate what they have seen to others. Does the youth come from Oxford \ — his head is full of Homer and Virgil, Horace and ^schylus : he could tell you the amours of Mars and Venus, of Jupiter and Leda ; he might rival Orpheus or Pindar in the melody of his Greek verses, and Cicero or Livy in the correctness of his Latin prose. But as, unfortunately, he has to write neither about gods nor goddesses, but mere mortals, and neither in Greek verse nor Latin verse, but in good English prose, he is utterly at a loss alike for thought and expression : he neither knows what to communicate, nor is he master of the language in which it is to be conveyed. Hence his recorded travels dwindle away into a mere scrap-book of classical quotations — a transcript of immaterial Latin inscriptions, destitute of either energy, information, or eloquence. Does he come from Cambridge % — he could solve cubic equations as well as Cardan ; is a more perfect master of logarithms than Napier ; could explain the laws of physical astronomy better than Newton, and rival Lagrange in the management of the differential calculus. But as, unluckily, the world which he visits, and in which we live, is neither a geometric world nor an algebraic world, a world of conic sections or fluxions, but a world of plains and mountains, of lakes and rivers, of men and women, flesh and blood, he finds his knowledge of little or no avail. He takes scarcely any interest in the sublunary or contemptible objects which engross the herd of ordinary mortals ; associates only with the learned and the recluse in a few universities ; and of course comes back M'ith- out having a word to utter, or a sentence to write, which can interest the bulk of readers. Does he come from the HUMBOLDT. 1 75 London University, or any of the proA^incial academies 1 — he is thinking only of raih'oads or mechanics, of chemistry or canals, of medicine or surgery : he could descant without end on sulphuric acid or decrepitating salts, on capacity for caloric or galvanic batteries, on steam engines and hydraulic machines, on the discoveries of Davy or the conclusions of Berzelius, on the systems of Hutton or Werner, of Liebigor Cuvier. But although an acquaintance with these different branches of practical knowledge is an important prelimi- nary to a traveller in foreign countries making himself acquainted with the improvements they have respectively made in the useful or practical arts, they will never qualify for the composition of a great or lasting book of travels. They would make an admirable course of instruction for the overseer of a manufactory, of a canal or railway company, of an hospital or an infirmary, who was to visit foreign countries in order to pick up the latest improvements in practical mechanics, chemistry, or medicine ; but have we really become a race of shopkeepers or doctors, and is Science sunk to be the mere handmaid of Art 'I We despair, therefore, as long as the present system of education prevails in England, (and Scotland of course fol- lows in the wake of its great neighbour,) of seeing any traveller arise of lasting celebrity, or book of travels written which shall attain to durable fame. The native vigour and courage, indeed, of the Anglo-Saxon race is perpetually impelling numbers of energetic young men into the most distant parts of the earth ; and immense is the addition which they are annually making to the sum-total of geo- graphical knowledge. We have only to look at one of our recent maps, as compared to those which were published fifty years ago, to see how much we owe to the courage and enterprise of Parry and Franklin, Park and Horneman, of Burckhardt and Lander. But giving all due credit — and none give it more sincerely than we do — to the vigour and courage of these very eminent men, it is impossible not to feel that, however well fitted they were to explore unknown and desert regions, and carry the torch of civilisation into the wilderness of nature, they had not the mental training, or varied information, or powers of composition, necessary to form a great luriter of travels. Clarke and Bishop Heber 176 HUMBOLDT. are most fcivourable specimeus of English trayellers, and do honour to the great universities of which thej were such distinguished ornaments; but thej did not possess the varied accomplishments and information of some of the Continental travellers. Their education, and very eminence in their peculiar and exclusive lines, precluded it. What is wanting in that character above everything is an acquaintance with, and interest in, a great many and different branches of knowledge, joined to considerable power of composition, and unconquerable energy of mind ; and that is precisely what our present system of education in England renders it almost impossible for any one to acquire. The system pur- sued in the Scottish universities, undoubtedly, is more likely to form men capable of rising to eminence in this depart- ment ; and the names of Park and Bruce show what travellers they are capable of sending forth. But the attractions of rank, connexion, and fashion, joined to the advantage of speaking correct English, are fast drawing a greater proportion of the youth of the higher ranks in Scot- land to the English universities ; and the education pursued at home, therefore, is daily running more and more into merely utilitarian and professional channels. That system is by no means the one calculated to form an accomplished and interesting writer of travels. In this deficiency of materials for the formation of a great body of male travellers, the ladies have kindly stepped in to supply the deficiency ; and numerous works have issued from the press, from the pens of the most accomplished and distinguished of our aristocratic beauties. But alas ! there is no royal road to literature, any more than geometry. Almack's and the exclusives, the opera and ducal houses, the society of lordhngs and guardsmen, form an admirable school for manners, and are an indispensable preliminary to success at courts and coronations, in ball-rooms and palaces. But the world is not made up of courts or palaces, of kings or princes, of dukes or marquesses. Men have something more to think of than the reception which the great world of one country gives to the great world of another ; of the balls to which they are invited, or the fetes which they grace by their charms ; or the privations to which elegant females, nursed in the lap of luxury, are exposed in roughing it amidst HUMBOLDT. 177 tlie snows of the North or the deserts of the South. We are grateful to the ladj travellers for the brilliant and interesting pictures thej have given us of capitals and manners/" of costume and dress, and of many eminent men and women, whom their rank and sex gave them peculiar opportunities of portraying. But we can scarcely congratu- late the country upon having found in tliem a substitute for learned and accomplished travellers of the other sex; or formed a set-off, on the part of Great Britain, to the Hum- boldts, the Chateaubriands, and Lamartines of continental Europe. It is impossible to contemplate the works of these great men without arriving at the conclusion, that it is in the varied and discursive education of the Continent that a foundation has been laid for the extraordinary eminence which its travellers have attained. It is the vast number of subjects with which the young men are in some degree made acquainted at the German universities, which has rendered them so capable in after life of travelling with advantage in any quarter of the globe, and writing their travels with effect. This advantage is in a peculiar manner conspicuous in Humboldt, whose mind, naturally ardent and capacious, had been surprisingly enlarged and extended by early and various study in the most celebrated German universities. He acquired, in consequence, so extraordinary a command of almost every department of physical and political science, that there is hardly any branch of it in which facts of importance may not be found in his travels. He combined, in a degree perhaps never before equalled in one individual, the most opposite and generally deemed irreconcilable mental qualities. To an ardent poetical temperament, and an eye alive to the most vivid impressions of external things, he united a power of eloquence rarely given to the most gifted orators, and the habit of close and accurate reasoning which belongs to the intellectual powers adapted for the highest branches of the exact sciences. An able mathematician, a profound natural philosopher, an exact observer of nature, he was at the same time a learned statistician, an indefatig- able social observer, an unwearied philanthropist, and the * Lady Londonderry's description of ;^^oscow is the best in the English lan- guage. VOL. in. M 178 HUMBOLDT. most powerful describer of nature that perhaps ever under- took to portray her great and glorious features. It is this extraordinary combination of qualities that render his works so surprising and valuable. The intellectual and imaginative powers rarely coexist in remarkable vigour in the same individual ; but when they do, they produce the utmost triumphs of the human mind. Leonardo da Vinci, Johnson, Burke, and Humboldt, do not resemble single men, how great soever, but rather clusters of separate persons, each supremely eminent in his peculiar sphere. Frederick Henry Alexander, Baron of Humboldt, brother of the celebrated Prussian statesman of the same name, was born at Berlin on the 14th September 1769, the same year with Wellington, Goethe, jMarshal Ney, and many other illustrious men. He received an excellent and extensive education at the university of Gottingen, and at an academy at Frankfort on the Oder. His first step into the business of life was as a clerk in the mercantile house of Buch, at Hamburg, where he soon made himself master of accounts and book-keeping, and acquired that perfect command of arithmetic, and habit of bringing everything, where it is possible, to the test of figures, by which his political and scientific writings are so pre-eminently distinguished. But his disposition was too strongly bent on scientific and physical pursuits, to admit of his remaining long in the comparatively obscure and uninviting paths of commerce. His thirst for travelling was from his earliest years unbounded, and it ere long received ample gratification. His first considerable journey was with two naturalists of distinction, Messrs Fontu and Genns, with whom he travelled in Germany, Holland, and England, in the course of which his attention was chiefly directed to mineralogical pursuits. The fruit of his observations appeared in a work, the first he ever published, which was printed at Brunswick in 1790, when he was only twenty-one years of age, entitled Observations sur les Basaltes clu RMn. To extend his information, already very considerable, on mineralogical science, Humboldt in 1791 repaired to Frey- berg, to profit by the instructions of the celebrated Werner ; and, when there, he devoted himself, with the characteristic ardour of his disposition, to make himself master of geology HUMBOLDT. 1 79 and botany, and prosecuted in an especial manner the study of the fossil remains of plants in the rocks around that place. In 1792, he published at Berlin a learned treatise, entitled Specimen Florce Fiiehergensis Suhterranice ; which procured for him such celebrity that he was soon after appointed director-general of the mines in the principalities of Anspach and Bayreuth, in Franconia. His ardent and philanthropic disposition there exerted itself for several years in promoting, to the utmost of liis power, various establishments of public utility ; among others, the public school of Streben, from whicli have already issued many distinguished scholars. Charmed by the recent and brilliant discoveries of M. Galvani in electricity, he next entered with ardour into that new branch of science ; and, not content with studying it in the abstract, he made a great variety of curious experiments on the effects of galvanism on his own person, and published the result in two octavos, at Berlin, in 1796, enriched by the notes of the celebrated naturalist Bliimenbach. This work was translated into French by J. F. Jadelot, and pubhshed at Paris in 1 799. JNleanwliile Humboldt, consumed with an insatiable desire for travelling, resumed his wander- ings, and roamed over Switzerland and Italy, after which he returned to Paris in 1797, and formed an intimacy with a congenial spirit, M. Aime Bonpland, who afterwards became the companion of his South American travels. At this time he formed the design of joining the expedition of Captain Baudiu, who was destined to circumnavigate the globe ; but the continuance of hostilities prevented him from carrying that design into effect. Baffled in that project, upon which his heart was much set, Humboldt went to Marseilles with the intention of embarking on board a Swedish frigate for Algiers, from whence he hoped to join Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, and cross from the banks of the Nile to the Persian Gulf and the vast regions of the East. This was tlie turning point of his destiny. The Swedish frigate never arrived ; the English cruisers rendered it impossible to cross the Mediterranean, except in a neutral vessel ; and after waiting with impatience for about two months, he set out for Madrid, in the hope of finding means in the Peninsula of passing into Africa from the opposite shores of Andalusia. 180 HUMBOLDT. Upon his arrival in the Spanish capital, the German philosopher was received with all the distinction which his scientific repntation deserved; and he obtained from the Government the extraordinary and nnlooked-for boon of a formal leave to travel over the whole South American colonies of the monarchy. This immediately determined Humboldt. He entered with ardour into the new prospects thus opened to him ; wrote to his friend Aime Bonpland to propose that he should join him in the contemplated expe- dition — an offer which was gladly accepted ; and soon the visions of Arabia and the Himalaya were supplanted by those of the Pampas of Buenos Ayres and the Cordilleras of Peru. The two friends embarked at Corunna on board a Spanish vessel, and after a prosperous voyage, reached Cumana, in the New World, in July 1799. From that city they made their first expedition in Spanish America, during which they travelled over Spanish Guiana, New Andalusia, and the Missions of the Caribbees, from whence they returned to Cumana in 1800. There they embarked for the Havannali ; and the whole of the summer of that year was spent in traversing the great and interesting island of which that city is the capital, on which he collected much important and valuable information. In September 1801, he set out for Quito, where lie arrived in January of tlie succeeding year, and was received with the most flattering distinction. Having reposed for some months from their fatigues, Humboldt and Bonpland proceeded, in the first instance, to survey the country which had been devastated in 1797 by the dreadful earthquake which swallowed up in a minute forty thousand persons. Then he set out, in June 1802, to visit the volcano of Tungaragno and the summit of Chimborazo. They ascended to the height of 19,500 feet on the latter mountain ; but were prevented from reaching the top by impassable ravines. Perched on one of the summits, however, of this giant of mountains, amidst ice and snow, far above the abode of any living creature, except the condor, they made a great variety of most interesting obser- vations, which have proved of essential service to the cause of science. They were 3485 feet above the most elevated point which the learned Condamine, who had liitherto ascended hisfhest, readied in 1745, but were still 2140 feet HUMBOLDT. 181 below the loftiest summit of tlie mountain. Thej deter- mined, bj a series of strict trigonometrical observations, the height of the chief peaks of that celebrated ridge — " Where Andes, giant of the western star. Looks from his throne of clouds o'er half the world." Having returned, after this fatiguing and dangerous mountain expedition, to Lima, Humboldt remained several months enjoying the liospitalitj of its kind-hearted inhabi- tants, whose w^arm feelings and excellent qualities excited in him the w^armest admiration. In the neicrhbourino: harbour of Callao, he was fortunate enough to see the passage of the planet Mercury over the disc of the sun, of which transit he made very important observations ; and from thence passed into the province of New^ Spain, where he remained an entire year, sedulously engaged in agricul- tural, political, and statistical, as well as physical inquiries, the fruits of which added much to the value of his pubhshed travels. In April 1803, he proceeded to Mexico, where he was so fortunate as to discover the only specimen known to exist of the tree called Ghe'irostomon Platanoides, of the highest antiquity and gigantic dimensions. During the remainder of that year, he made several excursions over the mountains and valleys of Mexico, inferior to none in the world in interest and beauty ; and in autumn 1804, embarked for the Havannah, from whence he passed into Philadelphia, and traversed a considerable part of the United States. At length, in 1805, he returned to Europe, and arrived safe at Paris in November of that year, bringing with him, in addition to the observations he had made, and recollections with which his mind was fraught, the most extensive and varied collection of specimens of plants and minerals that ever was brought from the New World. His herbarium consisted of four thousand different plants, many of them of extreme rarity even in South America, and great part of which w^ere previously unknown in Europe. His mineralogical collection was of equal extent and value. But by far the most important additions he has made to the cause of science, consist in the vast series of observations he has made in the New World, which have set at rest a great many disputed points in geography, mineralogy, and zoology, concerning that interesting and, in a great degree, unknown 182 HUMBOLDT. part of tlie world, and extended in a proportional degree the boundaries of knowledge regarding it. Nor have his labours been less important in collecting the most valuable statistical information regarding the Spanish provinces of those vast regions, especially the condition of the Indian, negro, and mulatto race which exist within them, and the amount of the precious metals annually raised from their mines : subjects of vast importance to Great Britain, and especially to its colonial and commercial interests, but which have hitherto been in an unaccountable manner neglected, even by those whose interests and fortunes were entirely wound up in the changes connected with these vital subjects. The remainder of Baron Humboldt's life has been chiefly devoted to the various and important publications, in which he has embodied the fruit of his vast and extensive researches in the New World. In many of these he has been assisted by M. Aime Bonpland, who, his companion in literary labour as in the dano-er and fatio'ues of travellino- has, with the generosity of a really great mind, been content to diminish, perhaps destroy, his prospect of individual celebrity, by associating himself with the labours of his illustrious friend. Pursued even in mature years by the desire of fame, the thirst for still greater achievements, which belongs to minds of the heroic cast, whether in war or science, he conceived, at a subsequent period, the design of visiting the upper provinces of India and the Himalaya range. After having ascended higher than man had yet done on the elevated ridges of the New World, he was consumed with a thirst to surmount the still more lofty summits of the Old, which have remained in solitary and unapproachable grandeur since the waves of the Deluge first receded from their sides. But the East India Company, within whose dominions, or at least beneath whose influence, the highest ridges of the Himalaya are situated, gave no countenance to the design, and even, it is said, refused liberty to the immortal naturalist to visit their extensive territories. Whatever opinion we may form on the liberalitv or wisdom of this resolution, considered with reference to the interests, physical, moral, and pohtical, of British India, it is not to be regretted, for the cause of science and literature over the HUMBOLDT. 183 Tvorld, that the great traveller has been prevented from setting out late in life to a fresh region of discovery. It has left the remainder of liis life, and his jet undiminished powers, to illustrate and explain what he has already seen. To do that, was enough for the ordinary span of human life. Humboldt's works relating to the New World are very numerous. I. He first published, in 1805, at Paris, in four volumes quarto, the Personal Narrative of his travels from 1799 to 1804. Of this splendid and interesting work, several editions have since been published in French, in twelve volumes octavo. It is upon it that his fame with the generality of readers mainly rests. II. Vues des Cor- dilleras et Momimens des Peiiples Indigenes de VAmeriqiie — two volumes folio : Paris, 1811. This magnificent work, the cost of which is now £130, contains by far the finest views of the Andes in existence. Its great price renders it very scarce, and not more than a few copies are to be met with in Great Britain ; but a cheap edition, without the great plates, was published at Paris in 1817. III. Recueil d' Observations Astronomiqiies, et de Mesures executees dans le Nouveau Continent: two volumes quarto. This learned work contains the result of Humboldt's astronomical and trigonometrical observations on the lunar distances, the eclipses of the satellites of Jupiter, the transit of Mercury, and upwards of five hundred elevated points in the New World, taken from barometrical observations, with all the requisite allowances and calculations carefully made. IV. Essai sur la Geographie des Plantes, on Tableau Physique des Regions Equinoxiales : in quarto, with a great map. V. Plantes Equinoxiales recueillies au Mexique, dans File de Cuba, dans les Provinces de Caraccas, &c. : two volumes folio. A splendid and very costly work. VI. Moiiographie des Melastomes : two volumes folio. A most curious and interesting work on a most interesting subject. VII. Nova Genera et Species Plantarum : three volumes folio. Con- taining an account of the botanical treasures collected by him in the New World, and brought home in his magni- ficent herbarium. VIII. Recueil des Observations de Zoologie et d' Anatomic Comparee faites dans un Toy age aux Tropiques : two volumes quarto. IX. Essai Politique 184 HUMBOLDT. sur la Nouvelle Bspagne—lSll : tNYO volumes quarto. Of this admirable work a subsequent editiou lias been published in 1822, in four volumes octavo. It contains an astonishing collection of important statistical facts, arranged and digested with the utmost ability, and interspersed with political and philosophical reflections on the state of the human race, and the relation of society in the New World. X. Ansichten cler Natur — Tubingen, 1808 : in octavo. It is remarkable that this is the only one of the learned author's works on Spanish America which originally appeared in his own language ; but it was soon translated into French under the title of Tableaux de la Nature — Paris, 1808. It contains a series of descriptions of the different styles of scenery and remarkable objects in the vast regions he had visited, portrayed with all the vigour and accuracy for which the author is distinguished. XI. De Distributione Geographicd Plaiitarum secundum Goeli Temperiem et Altitudinem Montium, Prolegomena — Svo. : Paris, 1817. The title of this work explains its object and its importance, in describing a portion of the globe consisting of such lofty and successive ridges and table-lands as rise from the level of the sea to the summits of the Cordilleras of Mexico and Peru. XII. Sur V Eleva- tion des Montagues de VInde — Svo. : Paris, 1818. A work prepared when the author was contemplating a journey to the Himalaya and mountains of Thibet. XIII. Carte du Fleuve Orenoque. Presented to the Academy of Sciences in 1817. M. Humboldt has there demonstrated the singular fact of the junction of the great rivers Orinoco and the Amazons by the intermediate waters of the Rio Negro — a fact which the sagacity of d'Anville had long ago led him to suspect, but which the travels of the indefatigable German has established beyond a doubt. XIV. Examen Critique de VHistoire de la Geograpliie du Noiiveau Con- tinent, et du Pr ogres de V Astronomie N antique aux Ibme et 16me siecles — Paris, 1837. XV. Cosmos: in German — a "Scheme of a Physical Description of the Universe." This last work embraces a much wider sphere of learning and speculation than any of the preceding, and is more characteristic of the vast erudition and ardent genius of the author. HUMBOLDT. 185 From the brief account which has now been given of the published works of this indefatigable traveller and author, the reader will be able to appreciate the extent and variety of his scientific and political attainments. We shall now present him under a different aspect, as an eloquent and almost unrivalled describer of nature. It need hardly be said that it is on these splendid pictures, more even than the numerous and valuable additions he has made to the treasures of science, that his reputation with the world in general is founded. The rapids of the Orinoco — one of the most striking scenes in x\merica — are thus described by our author •/'' — " When we arrived at the top of the Cliff of Marimi, the first object which caught our eye was a sheet of foam, above a mile iu length, and half a mile in breadth. Enormous masses of black rock, of an iron hue, started up here and there out of its snowy surface. Some resembled huge basaltic cliffs resting on each other ; many, castles in ruins, with detached towers and fortalices, guarding their approach from a distance. Their sombre colour formed a contrast with the dazzling whiteness of the foam. Every rock, every island, was covered with flourishing trees, the foliage of which is often united above the foaming gulf by creepers hanging iii festoons from their opposite branches. The base of the rocks and islands, as far as the eye can reach, is lost in the volumes of white smoke, which boil above the surface of the river ; but above these snowy clouds, noble palms, from eighty to a hundred feet high, rise aloft, stretching their summits of dazzling green towards the clear azure of heaven. With the changes of the day these rocks and palm-trees are alternately illuminated by the brightest sunshine, or projected in deep shadow on the surrounding surge. Xever does a breath of wind agitate the foliage, never a cloud obscure the vault of heaven. A dazzling light is ever shed through the air, over the earth enamelled with the loveliest flowers, over the foaming stream stretching as far as the eye can reach ; the spray, glittering in tlie sunbeams, forms a thousand rainbows, ever changing, yet ever bright, beneath whose arches islands of flowers, rivalling the very hues of heaven, flourish in perpetual bloom. There is nothing austere or sombre, as in northern climates, even in this scene of elemental strife ; tranquillity and repose seem to sleep on the very edge of the abyss of waters. Neither time, nor the sight of the Cordilleras, nor a long abode in the charming valleys of Mexico, have been able to efface from my recollection the impression made by these cataracts. When I read the description of similar scenes in the East, my mind sees again in clear vision the sea of foam, the islands of flowers, the palm-trees surmounting the snowy vapours. Such recollections, like the memory of the sublimest works of poetry and the arts, leave an impression which is never to be effaced, and which, through the whole of life, is associated with every sentiment of the grand and the beautiful." — Vol. vii. 171, 172. Such is a specimen of the descriptive powers of tlie great * We have translated all the passages ourselves. A very good translation of Humboldt's Personal Narrative was published many years ago, by Miss H. Williams ; but we could not resist the pleasure of trying to transfer to English such noble specimens of descriptive eloquence. 186 HUMBOLDT. German natural pliilosoplier, geographer, botanist, and tra- veller. When our senior wranglers from Cambridge, our high -honoured men from Oxford, or lady travellers from London, produce a parallel to it, we shall hope that Eng- land is about to compete with the Continental nations in the race of illustrious travellers — but not till then. As a contrast to this, we cannot resist the pleasure of laying before our readers the following striking description of a night on the Orinoco, in the placid part of its course, amidst the vast forests of the tropical regions : — " The night was calm and serene, and a beautiful moon shed a radiance over the scene. The crocodiles lay extended on the sand, placed in such a manner that they could watch our fire, from which thej never turned aside their eyes. Its dazzling evidently attracted them, as it does fish, crabs, and the other inhabitants of the waters. The Indians pointed out to us in the sand the recent marks of the feet of three tigers, a mother and two young, which had crossed the open space between the forest and the water. Find- ing no tree upon the shore, we sank the end of our oars into the sand, in order to form poles for our tents. Everything remained quiet till eleven at night, when suddenly there arose, in the neighbouring forest, a noise so frightful that it became impossible to shut our eyes. Amidst the voice of so many savage animals, which all roared or cried at once, our Indians could only distinguish the howling of the jaguar, the yell of the tiger, the roar of the cougar, or American lion, and the screams of some birds of prey. When the jaguars approached near to the edge of the forest, our dogs, which to that moment had never ceased to bark, suddenly housed, and, crouching, sought refuge under the shelter of our hammocks. Sometimes, after an interval of silence, the growl of the tiger was heard from the top of the trees, followed immediately by the cries of the monkey tenants of their branches, which fled the danger by which they were menaced. " I have painted, feature by feature, these nocturnal scenes on the Ori- noco, because, having but lately embarked on it, we were as yet unaccus- tomed to their wilduess. They were repeated for months together, every night that the forest approached the edge of the river. Despite the evident danger by which one is surrounded, the security which the Indian feels comes to communicate itself to your mind ; you become persuaded with him, that all the tigers fear the light of fire, and will not attack a man when lying in his hammock. In truth, the instances of attacks on persons in hammocks are extremely rare ; and during a long residence in South Ame- rica, I can only call to mind one instance of a Llanero, who was found torn to pieces in his hammock, opposite the island of Uhagua. " When one asks the Indians what is the cause of this tremendous noise, which at a certain hour of the night the animals of the forest make, they answer gaily, ' They are saluting the full moon." I suspect the cause in general is some quarrel or combat which has arisen in the interior of the forest. The jaguars, for example, pursue the pecaris and tapirs, which, hav- ing no means of defence but their numbers, fly in dense bodies, and press, in all the agony of terror, through the thickets which lie in their way. Terrified at this strife, and the crashing of boughs or rustling of thickets which they hear beneath them, the monkej's on the highest branches set up discordant cries of terror on every side. The din soon wakens the parrots and other birds which fill the woods, they instantly scream in the most violent way, and ere long the forest is in an uproar. We soon found that it HUMBOLDT. 187 is not so much during a full moon, as on the approach of a whirlwind or a storm, that this frightful concert arises among the wild beasts. ' May heaven give us a peaceable night and rest, like other mortals !' was the exclama- tion of the monk who had accompanied us from the Rio Negro, as he lay down to repose in our bivouac. It is a singular circumstance to be reduced to such a petition in the midst of the solitude of the woods. In the hotels of Spain, the traveller fears the sound of the guitar from the neighbouring apartment ; in the bivouacs of the Orinoco, which are spread on the open sand, or under the shade of a single tree, what you have to dread is the infernal cries which issue from the adjoining forest." — Yol. vi. 222-3. One of the most remarkable of the many remarkable fea- tures of nature in South America, is the prodigious plains which, under the name of Llanos and Pampas, stretch from the shores of the Atlantic to the foot of the Andes, oyer a space from fifteen hundred to two thousand miles in breadth. Humboldt traversed them more than once in their full extent, and has given the following striking description of their remarkable peculiarities : — " In many geographical w^orks, the savannahs of South America are termed prairies. That word, however, seems not properly applicable to plains of pasturage, often exclusively dry, though covered with grass four or five feet high. The Llanos and Pampas of South America are true steppes: they present a rich covering of verdure during the rainy season, but in the months of drought the earth assumes the appearance of a desert. The turf is then reduced to powder, the earth gapes in huge cracks ; the crocodiles and great serpents lie in a dormant state in the dried mud, till the return of rains, and the rise of the waters in the great rivers, which flood the vast expanse of level surface, awaken them from their long slumber. These appearances are often exhibited over an arid surface of fifty or sixty leagues square — everywhere, in short, where the savannah is not traversed by any of the great rivers. On the borders, on the other hand, of the streams, and around the lakes, which in the dry season retain a little brackish water, the traveller meets from time to time, even in the most extreme drought, groves of iMauritia, a species of palm, the leaves of which, spreading out like a fan, preserve amidst the surrounding sterility a brilliant verdure. " The steppes of Asia are all out of the region of the tropics, and form in general the summit of very elevated plateaux. America also presents, on the reverse of the mountains of Mexico, of Peru, and of Quito, steppes of considerable extent. But the greatest steppes, the Llanos of Cumana, of Caraccas, and of Meta, all belong to the equinoctial zone, and are very little elevated above the level of the ocean. It is this which gives them their peculiar characters. They do not contain, like the steppes of Southern Asia and the deserts of Persia, lakes without issue, or rivers which lose themselves in the sand or in subterraneous filtrations. The Llanos of South America incline towards the east and the south ; their waters are tributary to the Orinoco, the Amazon, or the Rio de la Plata. " What most strongly characterises the savannahs or steppes of South America, is the entire absence of hills or inequalities of any kind. The soil for hundreds of miles together is perfectly flat, without even a hillock. For this reason, the Castilian conquerors, who penetrated first from Coro to the banks of the Apure, named the regions to which they came neither deserts, nor savannahs, nor meadows, but 2jlains — los Llanos. Over an extent of thirty leagues square, you will often not meet with an eminence a foot high. 188 HUMBOLDT. The resemblance to the sea which these immense phiins bear, strikes the imagination the more forcibly in those places, often as extensive as half of France, where the surface is absolutely destitute of palms, or any species of trees, and where the distance is so great from the mountains, or the forests on the shores of the Orinoco, as to render neither visible. The uniform appearance which the Llanos exhibit, the extreme rarity of any habitations, the fatigues of a journey under a burning sun, and in an atmosphere per- petually clouded with dust, the prospect of a round girdle of an horizon, which appears constantly to recede before the traveller, the isolated stems of the palm-tree, all precisely of the same form, and Avhich he despairs to reach, because he confounds them with other seemingly identical trunks which appear in the distant parts of the horizon : all these causes combine to make these steppes appear even more vast than they really are. " Yet are their actual dimensions so prodigious that it is hard to outstrip them, even by the wildest flights of the imagination. The colonists, who inhabit the slopes of the mountains which form their extreme boundary on the west and north, see the steppes stretch away to the south and east, as far as the eye can reach, an interminable ocean of verdure. Well may they deem it boundless ! They know that from the Delta of the Orinoco, cross- ing the province of Vannos, and from thence by the shores of the Meta, the Guaviare, and the Caguan, you may advance in the plains, at first from east to west, then from north-east to south-east, three hundred and eighty leagues — a distance as great as from Tombuctoo to the northern coast of Africa. They know, by the report of travellers, that the Pampas of Buenos Ayres — which are also Llanos, destitute of trees, covered with rich grass, filled with cattle and wild horses — are equally extensive- They imagine, according to the greater part of maps, that this huge continent has but one chain of mountains, the Andes, which forms its western boundary ; and they forni a vague idea of the boundless sea of verdure stretching the whole way from the foot of this gigantic wall of rock, from the Orinoco and the Apure, to the Rio de la Plata and the Straits of Magellan. Imagination itself can hardly form an idea of the extent of these plains. The Llanos, from the Caqueta to the Apure, and from thence to the Delta of the Orinoco, contain 17,000 square marine leagues — a space nearly equal to the area of France ; that which stretches to the north and south is of nearly double the extent, or considerably larger than the surface of Germany ; and the Pampas of Buenos Ayres, which extend from thence towards Cape Horn, are of such extent, that while one end is shaded by the palm-trees of the tropics, the other, equally flat, is charged with the snows of the antarctic circle." — Vol. vi. 52, 67. These prodigious plains Lave been overspread with the horses and cattle of tlie Old World, which, originally intro- duced bj the Spanish settlers, have strayed from the enclo- sures of their masters, and multiplied without end in the vast savannahs which nature had spread out for their reception. " It is impossible," says Humboldt, " to form an exact enumeration of the cattle in the Pampas, or even to give an approximation to it, so immensely have they augmented during the three centuries which have elapsed since they were first introduced ; but some idea of their number may be formed from the following facts, in regard to such portions of these vast herds as are capable of being counted. It is calculated that in the plains from the mouths of the Orinoco to the Lake Mai-acaybo there are 1,200,000 head of cattle, 180,000 horses, and 90,000 mules, which belong to individual pro- HUMBOLDT. 189 prietors. In the Pampas of Buenos Ayres there are 12,000.000 cows and 3,000,000 horses belonging to private persons, besides the far greater mul- titude which are wild, and wander altogether beyond the reach of man. Considerable revenues are realised from the sale of the skins of these animals, for they are so common that the carcases are of scarcely any value. They are at pains only to look after the young of their herds, which are marked once a-year with the initial letter of the owner. Fourteen or fifteen thousand are marked by the greater proprietors every year, of Avhich five or six thousand are annually sold." — Vol. vi. 97. The enormous number of beasts of prey wliicli multiply with this vast accumulation of animals to be devoured, as well those introduced by man as those furnished by the hand of nature, renders the life of many of the inhabitants of these regions little else than a constant struggle with wild animals. Many hairbreadth escapes and heroic adven- tures are recounted by the natives, which would pass for fabulous if not stated on such unquestionable authority as that of M. Humboldt, and supported by the concurring testimony of other travellers. Tlie number of alligators, in particular, on the Orinoco, the Rio Apure, and their tributary streams, is prodigious; and contests with them constitute a large portion of the legendary tales of the Indian and European settlers in the forest. " The numerous wild animals," says Humboldt, " which inhabit the forests on the shores of the Orinoco, have made apertures for themselves in the wall of vegetation and foliage by which the woods are bounded, out of which they come forth to drink in the river. Tigers, tapirs, jaguars, boars, besides numberless lesser quadrupeds, issue out of these dark arches in the green wilderness, and cross the strip of sand which generally lies between it and the edge of the water, formed by the large space which is annually devastated and covered with shingle or mud, during the rise of the water in the rainy season. These singular scenes have always possessed a great attraction for me. The pleasure experienced was not merely that of a naturalist in the objects of his study ; it belongs to all men who have been educated in the habits of civilisation. You find yourself in contact with a new world, with savage and unconquered Nature. Sometimes it is the jaguar, the beautiful panther of America, which issues from its dark retreat ; at others the hosco, with its dark plumes and curved head, which traverses the sauso^ as the band of yellow sand is called. Animals of the most various kinds and opposite descriptions succeed each other without intermission. ' Es como en el Paradiso,' (It is as in Paradise,) said our pilot, an old Indian of the Missions. In truth, everything here recalls that primitive world of which the traditions of all nations have preserved the recollection, the inno- cence, and happiness ; but on observing the habits of the animals towards each other, it is evident that the Age of Gold has ceased for them as well as for the human race : they mutually fear and avoid each other ; and in the lonely American forests, as elsewhere, long experience has taught all living beings that gentleness is rarely united to force." " When the sands on the river-side are of considerable breadth, the sauso often stretches to a considerable distance from the water's edge. It is on 190 HUMBOLDT. this intermediate space that you see the crocodiles, often to the number of eight or ten, stretched on the sand. Motionless, their huge jaws opened at right angles, they lie without giving any of those marks of affection w^hich are observable in other animals which live in society. The troop separate when they leave the coast ; they are probably composed of several females and one imale. The former are much more numerous than the latter, from the number of males which are killed in fighting during the time of their amours. These monstrous reptiles have multiplied to such a degree, that there was hardly an instant during our voyage along the w^hole course of the river that we had not five or six in view. We measured one dead which was lying on the sand ; it was sixteen feet nine inches long. Soon after, M. Bouplaud found a dead male on the shore, measuring twenty two feet three inches. Under every zone — in America as in Egypt — this animal attains the same dimensions. The Indians told us, that at San Fernando scarce a year passes without two or three grown np persons, usually women, who are drawing water from the river, being devoured by these carnivorous lizards. " They related to us an interesting story of a young daughter of Urituen, who, by extraordinary intrepidity and presence of mind, succeeded in extricating herself from the very jaws of a crocodile. When she felt herself seized by the voracious animal in the water, she felt for its eyes, and thrust her fingers into them with such violence that she forced the animal to let go, but not before he had torn off the lower part of her left arm. The Indian girl, notwithstanding the enormous quantity of blood which she lost, succeeded in swimming to shore with the hand which was left, and escaped without further injury. In those desert regions, where man is constantly in strife with animate or inanimate nature, they daily speak of similar or corresponding means by which it is possible to escape from a tiger, a great boa, or a crocodile. Every one prepares himself against a danger which may any day befall him. ' I knew,' said the young girl calmly, when praised for her presence of mind, ' that the crocodile lets go his hold when you plunge your fingers in his eyes.' Long after my return to Europe, I learned that the negroes in the interior of Africa make use of the same method to escape from the alligators in the Xiger. Who does not recollect with warm interest, that Isaaco the guide, in the last journey of the unfor- tunate Muugo Park, was seized twice near Boulinkombro, and that he escaped from the throat of the monster solely by thrusting his tingers into his two eyes?* The African Isaaco and the young American girl owed their safety to the same presence of mind, and the same combination of ideas."— Vol. vi. 203, 205. If there is any one fact more than another demonstrated by the concurring testimony of travellers, historians, and statistical observers, in all ages and quarters of the world, it is, that the possession o^ property in land is the first step in social improvement, and the only effectual humaniser of Savage Man. Rousseau's famous paradox, " The first man who enclosed a field, and called it mine, is the author of all the social ills which followed," is not only false, but decidedly the reverse of the truth. He was the first and greatest benefactor of his species. Subsequent ills have arisen, not from following but forgetting his example; and * Park's Last Mission to Africa, 1S15, p. 89. HUMBOLDT. 191 preferring to the simplicity of country life the seductions and vices of urban society. Humboldt adds his important testimony to the noble army of ^yitnesses in all ages, and from all parts of the \Yorld, on this all-important subject. " The Guamos are a race of Indians whom it is extremely difficult to fix down to the soil. Like other wandering savages, they are distinguished by their dirt, revengeful spirit, and fondness for wandering. The greater part of them live by fishing and the chase, in the plains often flooded by the Apure, the Meta, and the Guaviare. The nature of those regions, their vast extent and entire want of any limit or distinguishing mark, seems to invite their inhabitants to a wandering life. On entering, again, the moun- tains which adjoin the cataracts of the Orinoco, you find among the Piroas, the Macos, and the Macquiritares, milder manners, a love of agriculture, and remarkable cleanliness in the interior of their cabins. On the ridges of mountains, amidst impenetrable forests, man is forced to fix himself, to clear and cultivate a corner of the earth. That culture demands little care, and is richly rewarded ; while the life of a hunter is painful and difficult. The Guamos of the Mission of Santa Barbara are kind and hospitable ; whenever we entered their cottages, they offered us dried fish and water." — Vol. vi. 219. No spectacle in nature can exceed, few equal, the subli- mity and magnificence of the scenery presented by the vast chain of mountains which, under the name of Cordilleras, Andes, and Rocky Mountains, traverses the whole conti- nent of America, both north and south, in the neighbour- hood of the Pacific Ocean. Of this prodigious pile of rocks and precipices, Humboldt, in another of his works, has given the following admirable account : — " The immense chain of the Andes, traversing its whole extent near the Pacific Ocean, has stamped a character upon South American nature which belongs to no other country. The peculiarity which distinguishes the regions which belong to this immense chain, are the successive plateaux, like so many huge natural terraces, which rise one above another, before arriving at the great central chain, where the highest summits are to be found. Such is the elevation of some of these plains that they often exceed eight and nine, and sometimes reach that of twelve thousand feet above the level of the sea. The lowest of these plateaux is higher than the summit of the Pass of the Great St Bernard, the highest inhabited ground in Europe, which is 7545 feet above the level of the sea. But such is the benignity of the climate, that at these prodigious elevations, which even in the south of Europe are above the line of perpetual snow, are to be found cities and towns, corn-fields and orchards, and all the symptoms of rural felicity. The town of Quito itself, the capital of a province of the same name, is situated on a plateau, or elevated valley, in the centre of the Andes, nearly 9000 feet above the level of the sea. Yet there is found concentrated a numerous population, and the province contains cities with thirty, forty, and even fifty thousand inhabitants. After living some months on this elevated ground, you experience an extraordinary illusion. Finding yourself surrounded with pasture and corn-fields, flocks and herds, smiling orchards and golden harvests, the sheep and the llama, the fruits of Europe and those of America, you forget that you are as it were suspended between heaven and earth. 192 HUMBOLDT. and elevated to a height exceeding that by which the European traveller makes his way from France into Italy, and double that of Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in Great Britain. " The diflferent gradations of vegetation, as might be expected in a coun- try where the earth rises from the torrid zone by a few steep ascents to the regions of eternal congelation, exhibit one of the most remarkable features in this land of wonders. From the borders of the sea to the height of two thousand feet, are to be seen the magnificent palm-tree, the musa, the hele- conia, the balsams ofTolu, the large flowering jfismin, the date-tree, and all the productions of tropical climates. On the arid and burning shores of the ocean, flourish in addition to these the cotton- tree, the mangolias, the cactus, the sugar-cane, and all the luscious fruits which ripen under the genial sun, and amidst the balmy breezes of the West India Islands. One only of these tropical children of nature, the Carosylou Andicola^ is met with far in advance of the rest of its tribe, tossed by the winds at the height of seven and eight thousand feet above the sea, on the middle ridges of the Cordillera range. In this lower region, as nature exhibits the riches, so she has spread the pestilence, of tropical climates. The humidity of the atmosphere, and the damp heats which are nourished amidst its intricate thickets, produce violent fevers, which often prove extremely destructive, especially to European constitutions. But if the patient survives the first attack, the remedy is at hand ; a journey to the temperate climate of the elevated plateau soon restores health ; and the sufferer is as much revived by the gales of the Andes, as the Indian valetudinarian is by a return to Europe. "Above the region of the palms commences the temperate zone. It is there that vegetation appears in its most delightful form, luxuriant without being rank, majestic yet not impervious ; it combines all that nature has given of the grand, with all that the poets have figured of the beautiful. The bark-tree, which she has provided as the only effectual febrifuge in the deadly heats of the inferior region ; the Cyprus and raelastoma, Avith their superb violet blossoms ; gigantic fuchsias of every possible variety, and evergreen trees of lofty stature, covered with flowers, adorn that delightful zone. The turf is enamelled by never-fading flowers ; mosses of dazzling beauty, fed by the frequent rains attracted by the mountains, cover the rocks ; and the trembling branches of the mimosa, and others of the sensi- tive tribe, hang in graceful pendants over every declivity. Almost all the flowering shrubs which adorn our conservatories are to be found there in primeval beauty, and what to Europeans appears a gigantic scale ; magnifi- cent arums of many different kinds spread their ample snowy petals above the surrounding thickets ; and innumerable creepers, adorned by splendid blossoms, mount even to the simimit of the highest trees, and difluse a perennial fragrance around. " The oaks and trees of Europe are not found in those parts of the Andes which lie in the torrid zone, till you arrive at the height of five thousand feet above the sea. It is there you first begin to see the leaves fall in winter, and bud in spring, as in European climates ; below that level the foliage is perpetual. Nowhere are the trees so large as in this region ; not unfre- quently they are foimd of the height of a hundred and eighty or two hun- dred feet ; their stems are from eight to fifteen feet across at their base, and sometimes rise a hundred feet without a single cross branch. When so great an elevation as the plains of Quito, however, which is 9515 feet above the sea, is reached, they become less considerable, and not larger than those usually found in the forests of Europe. If the traveller ascends two thou- sand feet higher, to an elevation of eleven or twelve thousand ^dQt., trees almost entirely disappear ; but the frequent humidity nourishes a thick covering of arbutus and other evergreens, shrubs three or four feet high, covered with flowers generally of a bright yellow, which form a striking con- HUMBOLDT. 193 trast to the dark evergreen foliage with which they are surrounded. Still higher, at the height of thirteen thousand feet, near the summit of the lower ranges of the Cordilleras, almost constant rains overspread the earth with a verdant and slippery coating of moss ; amidst which a few stunted speci- mens of the melastoma still exhibit their purple blossoms. A broad zone succeeds, covered entirely Avith Alpine plants, which, as in the mountains of Switzerland, nestle in the crevices of rocks, or push their flowers, generally of yellow or dark blue, through the now frequent snow. Higher still, grass alone is to be met with, mixed wath the grey moss which conducts the wearied traveller to the region of perpetual snow^, which in those warm lati- tudes is general only at an elevation of fifteen thousand feet. Above that level no animated being is found, except the huge condor, the largest bird that exists, which there, amidst ice and clouds, has fixed its gloomy abode." — Tableau de la Nature dans les Regions Equatoriales, 59, 140-144. In tlie rhjtlmi of prose these are the colours of poetrj ; but it is of poetrj chastened and directed bj the observation of reality, and possessing the inimitable charm of being drawn from real life, and sharing the freshness and variety which characterise the works of nature, and distinguish them from the brightest conceptions of human fancy. As we have set out in this article with placing Humboldt at the head of modern travellers, and much above any that Great Britain has produced, and assigned as the main reason of this superiority the exclusive and limited range of objects on which the attention of our youth is fixed at our great uni- versities, we shall, in justice to Oxford and Cambridge, present the reader with a specimen of the finest passages from Clarke and Bishop Heber, that he may judge for him- self on their merit, great as it often is, when compared with that of the ardent and yet learned German. Clarke, on leaving Greece, gives the following brilliant summary of the leading features of that classic land : — " The last moments of this day were employed in taking once more a view of the superb scenery exhibited by the mountains Olympus and Ossa. They appeared upon this occasion in more than usual splendour ; like one of those imaginary Alpine regions suggested by viewing a boundary of clouds when tliey terminate the horizon in a still evening, and are gathered into heaps, with many a towering top shining in fleecy whiteness. The great Olympian chain forms a line which is exactly opposite to Salonica ; and even the chasm between Olympus and Ossa, constituting the defile of Tempe, is here visible. Directing the eye towards that chain, there is com- prehended in one view the whole of Pieria and Botti?eis ; and with the vivid impressions which remain after leaving the country, memory easily recalled into one mental picture the whole of Greece. Every reader may not duly comprehend what is meant by this ; but every traveller who has beheld the scenes to which allusion is made, will readily admit its truth ; he will be aware that, whenever his thoughts were directed to that country, the whole of it recurred to his imagination, as if he were actually indulged with a view of it. VOL. III. N 194 HUMBOLDT. " In such an imaginary flight he enters, for example, the defile of Tempe ; and as the gorge opens to the south, he beholds all the Larissian plain. This conducts him to tlie fields of Pharsalia, whence he ascends the moun- tains south of Pharsalus ; then, crossing the bleak and still more elevated region extending from these mountains towards Lamia, he views Mount Piudus far before him, and, descending into the plain of the Sperchius, passes the straits of Thermopylae. Afterwards, ascending Mount OEta, he beholds opposite to him the snowy point of Lycorea, with the rest of Par- nassus, and the villages and towns lying at its base : the wiiole plain of Elataia lying at his feet, with the course of the Cephisus to the sea. Pass- ing to the summit of Parnassus, he looks down upon all the other moun- tains, plains, islands, and gulfs of Greece ; but especially surveys the broad bosom of Citha?ron, Helicon, and Ilymettus. Thence, roaming into the depths and over all the heights of Euboea and Peloponnesus, he has their inmost recesses again submitted to his contemplation. Xext, resting upon Hymettns, he examines, even in the minutest detail, the whole of Attica, to the Sunian promontory ; for he sees it all — and all the shores of Argos, Sicyon, Corinth, INIegara, Eleusis, and Athens. Thus, although not in all the freshness of its living colours, yet in all its grandeur, doth Greece actually present itself to the mind's eye — and may the impression never be obliterated ! In the eve of bidding it farewell for ever, as the hope of visit- ing this delightful country constituted the earliest and warmest wish of his youth, the author found it to be some alleviation of his regret excited by a consciousness of his never returning, that he could thus summon to his recollection the scenes over which he had passed." — Clarke's Travels^ vol. vii. p. 476-478. So far Clarke — the accomplished and famed trayeller of Cambridge. We now giye a favourable specimen of Bishop Heber — his companion in traversing Russia — the celebrated author, in early life at Oxford, of Palestine, the amiable and upright Bishop of Calcutta, whose life, if ever that could be said of mortal, was literally spent in doing good. This accomplished and excellent prelate thus describes the first view of the Himalaya range and the summits of Nundidevi, one of the highest mountains in the world, nearly 5000 feet above the loftiest peak of Chimborazo. "After coasting the lake for a mile, we ascended for thirteen more by a most steep and rugged road over the neck of Mount Gaughur, through a succession of glens, forests, and views of the most sublime and beautiful description. I never saw such prospects before, and had formed no ade- quate idea of such. My attention was completely strained, and my ej'es filled with tears ; everything around was so wild and magnificent that man appeared as nothing, and I felt myself as if climbing the steps of the altar of the great temple of God. The trees, as we advanced, were in a large proportion fir and cedar ; but many were ilex ; and to my surprise I still saw, even in these wild Alpine tracts, many venerable Peepul trees, on which the white monkeys were playing their gambols. Tigers used to be very common and mischievous ; but since the English have begun to frequent the country, they have become very scarce. There are many wolves and bears, and some chamois, two of which passed near us. After wending up — HUMBOLDT. 195 * A wild romantic chasm, that slanted Down the steep hill athwart a cedar cover — A savage place, as holy and enchanted As e'er beneath the waning moon was haunted B}^ woman's wailing for her demon lover,' we arrived at the gorge of the Pass, in an indent between the two principal summits of Mount Gaughur, near 8600 feet above the sea. And now the snowy mountains, which had been so long eclipsed, opened upon us in full magnificence. To describe a view of this kind is only lost labour : and I found it nearly as impossible to make a sketch of it. Nundidevi was imme- diately opposite, Kedarnath was not visible, but Marvo was visible as a distant peak. The eastern mountains, for whom I could procure no name, rose into great consequence, and were very glorious objects as we wound down the hill on the other side. The guides could only tell us they were a great way off, and on the borders of the Chinese empire. Nundidevi, the highest peak in the world, is 25,689 feet above the sea, 4000 higher than Chimborazo. Bhadinath and Kedarnath, which are merely summits of it, are 22,300 feet high. They are all in the British dominions." — Heber's India, vol. ii. p. 193-194, 209. On comparing the descriptions of the most interesting objects in Europe and Asia — Greece and the Himalaya range — bj these two distinguished British travellers, with the pictures given bj Humboldt of the Andes, the falls of the Orinoco, the forests of the same river, and the expanse of the Pampas in South America, every one must admit the great superiority of the German's powers of painting nature. Neither Clarke nor Heber appear to attempt it. They tell you, indeed, that certain scenes were grand and beautiful, certain rocks wild, certain glens steep ; but they make no attempt to portray their features, or convey to the reader's mind the pictures which they tell you are for ever engraven on their own. This is a very great defect — so great indeed that it will probably prevent their works, how valuable soever as books of authority or reference, from ever acquiring lasting fame. It is a total mistake to say that it is in vain to attempt describing such scenes ; that is the same mistake as was formerly committed by pacific academical historians, who said it was useless to attempt painting a battle, for they were all like each other. How like they really are to each other has been shown by Colonel Napier, and many other modern historians. We question if even the sight of the rapids of the Orinoco would make so vivid an impression on the imagination, as Hum- boldt's inimitable description ; or a journey over the Pam- pas or the Andes, convey a clearer or more distinct idea 196 HUMBOLDT. of their opposite features than what has been derived from his brilliant pencil. It is the same with all the other scenes in nature. Description, if done by a masterly hand, can, to an intelligent mind, convey as viyid an idea as reality. What is wanting is the enthusiasm which warms at the perception of the subhme and the beautiful, the poetic mind which seizes as by inspiration its characteristic features, and the pictorial eye which discerns the appearances they ex- hibit, and, by referring to images known to all, succeeds in causing them to be generally felt by the readers. With all Humboldt's great and transcendent merits, he is a child of Adam, and therefore not without his faults. The principal of these is the want of arrangement. His travels are put together without any proper method ; there is a great want of indexes and tables of contents ; it is scarcely possible, except by looking over the whole, to find any passage you want. This is a fault which, in a person of his accurate and scientific mind, is very surprising, and the more inexcusable that it could so easily be reme- died by mechanical industry, or the aid of compilers and index-makers. But akin to this is another fault of a more irremediable kind, as it originates in the varied excellences of the author, and the vast store of information on many different subjects which he brings to bear on the subject of his travels. He has so many topics of which he is master himself, that he forgets with how few, comparatively, his readers are familiar ; he sees so many objects of inquiry — physical, moral, and political — in the countries which he visits, that he becomes insensible to the fact that, though each probably possesses a certain degree of interest to each reader, yet it is scarcely possible to find one to whom, as to himself, they are all alike the object of eager solicitude and anxious investigation. Hence, notwithstanding his attempt to detach his Personal Narrative from the learned works which contain the result of his scientific researches, he has by no means succeeded in effecting their separation. The ordinary reader, who has been fascinated by his glowing description of tropical scenery, or his graphic picture of savage manners, is, a few pages on, chilled by disquisitions on tlie heiglit of the barometer, the disc of the sun, or the electricity of the atmosphere ; while the scientific student, HUMBOLDT. 197 who turns to bis works for information on liis favourite objects of study, deems tbem strangely interspersed witb rhapsodies on glowing sunsets, silent forests, and sounding cataracts. It is scarcely possible to find a reader to whom all these objects are equally interesting ; and therefore it is scarcely to be expected that his travels, unrivalled as their genius and learning are, will ever be the object of general popularity. In truth, here, as in all the other branches of human thought, it will be found that the rules of composition are the same, and that a certain unity of design is essential to general success or durable fame. If an author has many dif- ferent and opposite subjects of interest in his head, which is not unfrequently the case with persons of the higher order of intellect, and he can descant on all with equal facility, or investigate all with equal eagerness, he will do well to recollect that the minds of his readers are not likely to be equally discursive, and that he is apt to destroy the influence or mar the effect of each, if he blends them together ; separation of works is the one thing needful there. A mathe- matical proposition, a passage of poetry, a page of history, are all admirable things in their way, and each may be part of a work destined to durable celebrity ; but what should we say to a composition which should present us, page about, with a theorem of Euclid, a scene from Shakspeare, and a section from Gibbon '? Unity of effect, identity of train of thought, similarity of ideas, are as necessary in a book of travels as in an epic poem, a tragedy, or a painting. There is no such thing as one set of rules for the fine arts, and another for works of thought or reflection. The Iliad is constructed on the same principles as the Principia of Newton, or the history of Thucydides. What makes ordinary books of travels so uninteresting, and, in general, so shortlived, is the want of any idea of composi- tion, or unity of effect, in the minds of their authors. Men and women seem to think that there is nothing more necessary to do to make a book of travels, than to give a transcript of their journals, in which everything is put down, of luhatever importance, provided only it really occurred. Scenes and adventures, broken wheels and rugged rocks, cataracts and omelets, lakes and damp beds, thunderstorms and waiters. 198 HUMBOLDT. are Imddled together, without anj other thread of connec- tion than the accidental and fortuitous one of their having successively come under the notice of the traveller. What should we say to any other work composed on the same principle 1 What if INIilton, after the speech of Satan in Paradise Lost, were to treat us to an account of his last dinner ; or Shakspeare, after the scene of the tomb in Juliet, were to tell us of the damp sheets in which he slept last night ; or Gibbon, after working up the enthusiasm of his readers by the account of the storming of Constantinople by the Crusaders, was to favour us w^ith a digression on the insolence of the postilions in Roumelia '? All the world would see the folly of this ; and yet this is precisely what is constantly done by travellers, and tolerated by the public, because it is founded on nature. Founded on nature ! Is everything that is actually true, or real, fit to be recorded or worthy of being recounted 1 Sketches from nature are admirable things, and are the only foundation for correct and lasting pictures ; but no man would think of interposing a gallery of paintings with chalk drawings or studies of trees. Correctness, fidelity, truth, are the only secure bases of eminence in all the arts of imitation ; but the light of genius, the skilful arrangement, the principles of composition, the selection of topics, are as necessary in the writer of travels as in the landscape painter, the historian, or the epic poet. THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF AKCHITECTUEE [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, August 1836] Of all the fine arts, arcliitectnre is the one which appears most likely to attain great and deserved eminence in these regions. We have no need of imagination to figure to our- selves what, in time to come, this noble art may become in this northern clime. We have only to look at the cathedrals and monasteries which, in stately magnificence or ruined splendour, overspread the land, to be satisfied that greatness is here within the reach of our people ; that it is suited to their taste, their habits, and their disposition ; and that neither its cloudy sky nor frigid atmosphere have been able to chill the flights of great and original genius in this department. In the other fine arts we appear to be struggling against the stream. Painting languidly contends with the vis inertice in its professors, arising from the experienced inability of purchasers, generally speaking, to distinguish a good work from an indifferent one. Sculpture, notwithstanding the wealth which has been lavished, and the talent which has been turned to that direction, has never yet attained to an equality witli the great works of Grecian or Italian art ; but architecture, in some departments, is unrivalled in the British isles. An Englishman feels mortified as he leads a foreigner of taste through the vast accumulation of conceit and absurdity which characterises the monuments of Westminster Abbey, and which so seriously weakens the effect of its noble aisles ; he looks in vain for a gallery of British artists to satisfy an eye accustomed to the works of Claude or Carracci. But he points with exultation to the pinnacles of Lincoln, the dome of St Paul's, and prophesies, that when in the revolutions of 200 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. ages all the other structures of these times shall have been swept away — when the desolation of Nineveh shall be renewed on the site of Paris, and a vast accumulation of mounds alone indicate the mighty expanse of London, — even then Waterloo bridge will still span with undecaying sohdity the floods of the Thames ; and the solitary savage will pause as he beholds through the openings of the forest the stately towers of York Cathedral. As architecture is the only one of the fine arts which seems congenial to the taste of our people, and in which the revolution of ages has produced works worthy of immortal endurance, the future cultivation of it becomes an object of the highest interest and importance. It is obvious that the final reputation of every nation depends as much, perhaps more, on the structures which they have reared as on the writings they have produced, or the conquests they have gained. If we examine with attention the nations which are sanctified in our recollections by a halo of imperishable lustre, we shall find that nothing has impressed our imagina- tions so strongly as the great and durable edifices which they have constructed, and which still rear their hoary heads through the obscurity of time, as if to emulate the eternity of nature, and defy the tendency to decay which she has in general impressed on all the works of man. We read in the Bible, and are familiar from our childhood with the Assyrians and Babylonians ; but even the veneration inspired by that holy record is increased when we behold the mighty structures they have reared still standing on the plain of Shinar — when, from the summit of the green mounds on the Tigris, we trace the vast circumference of the walls of Nineveh, and in the gigantic pile of the Birs-Nimrod, with its summit scathed by fire, and torrents furrowing its sides, we behold the imperishable remains of the Tower of Babel. Egypt is regarded by all nations as the common mother of knowledge and civilisation ; but great as the blessings have been which she communicated to man, they would have been forgotten in the revolutions of ages, and its rich plains have become as obscure as those of the Quorra or the Congo, did not the stately remains of Luxor yet exist in undecaying beauty amidst the sands of the desert, and the pyramids still stand " erect and unshaken above the floods of the Nile." Ex- THE BEITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 201 quisite as are the poems, admirable the liistorians, profound the philosophers of ancient Greece, it is not from them alone that the indelible charm of Athens is derived. The grace of the Parthenon, the Pillars of Jupiter Oljmpius, impress our imaginations as strongly as the eloquence of Demostlienes or the pathos of Euripides ; and when the travelled scholar goes back in imagination to the classic shores which he has visited, he thinks less of the land of Miltiades or Plato than of the white columns of Sunium glittering in the morning sun, or the golden light of evening shedding its lovely tints on the pillars of the Acropolis. Rome itself, the mistress of the world, and whose dominion extended from the Wall of Antoninus to the foot of Mount Atlas, from the shores of the Euphrates to the Atlantic Ocean, owes much of the magic of its name to the noble remains of its architectural splendour ; and the traveller, as he passes under the Amphitheatre of Titus, ceases to wonder at the saying of the pilgrims — "While the Colosseum stands, Rome shall stand ; while Rome stands, the world shall stand." It is the same with modern times. Ask the American traveller what it is which impressed him most with the land of his fathers when he first approached it from the Atlantic Ocean, and he will answer that it is neither its harbours nor its scenery, its rivers nor its mountains, its lakes nor its cataracts, which produced an indelible impression on his mind. All these his own Transatlantic wilds could equal or excel. It is its cathedrals and monastic remains whicli captivated his imagination ; it is their stately piles, rising amidst the green meadows or shady woods with which they are surrounded, which gave a peculiar and undefined charm to English scenery, and carried him back in imagination to the Edwards and the Henrys, and the Catholic times and the age of chivalry, and gave to inanimate stone all the charm of historical lore. Let any one who has visited all that is beautiful and interesting which it contains, whether in urban magnificence or rural beauty, consider what objects are engraven on his memory in the brightest colours, and have taken their place in secret cells, never to be disturbed while life endures. He will find it is her castles and her cathedrals — her abbeys and monasteries. He will think of Fountains Abbey, raising its light and airy arches from the 202 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. green and closely-sliaven turf of the little valley in which it stands ; and its magnificent trees almost equalling the elevation even of its lofty aisles. He will think of Tintern casting a holy air over the secluded shades of the Wye, and picture in imagination the gorgeous festoons of ivy hanging over its mouldering windows, and the leafy screen which shrouds from profane gaze the exquisite details of its tracery. He will call to mind Rivaulx Abbey, rising in solemn majesty in its lovely vale ; and the last rays of the evening sun projecting its graceful arches against the dark overhanging Avood of Duncombe Park. He will think of Conway still, as in the days of Edward, with its massive round towers and picturesque walls surmounting the captive streams of Wales ; and Warwick yet standing in undecayed strength, the fit abode of the " knocker-down and putter-up of kings." He will think of the red towers of Bothwell, surmounting the green masses of foliage which surround their base, and the close-shaven turf which descends in rapid slope to the Clyde, and the dark-brown caverns of that classic stream at its foot ; or of Castle Campbell, erect though mouldering in gray and dreary solitude, amidst the hanging forests and sounding cataracts of Caledonia; or of Kenilworth, encircled by the green meadows and stately oaks of Warwickshire, rich in ivy, and architectural decoration, and storied asso- ciation. Durham will rise up to his recollection with its gorgeous towers in the middle distance, the ancient pile of the bishop's palace in the foreground, and hanging woods in the background ; or Gloucester, with the light and fairy open work of its minarets projected in the glow of an CA^ening sky. London itself, with all its greatness, its riches, and its recollections, yields to the magic of architectural magnificence; and when the mind reverts to it at a distance, and when not distracted by particular objects of pursuit, it thinks neither of its theatres nor its opera, its parks nor its squares, its fashion nor its genius, — but of the gray and massy piles which surmount or bestride the Thames — of its granite bridges and forest of spires — of Westminster Abbey closing the scene at one extremity, and the vast dome of St Paul's towering above clouds and smoke like a giant at the other. Turn to the Continent. Every traveller knows the unbounded, the incalculable effect of the architectural riches THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF AECHITECTURE. 203 ^itli Tvliicli it is stored. In tmtli, the impression arising from its great edifices is so powerful, it is so indelibly associated with the recollection of the places and states in which the J are to be found, that it is altogether impossible to separate them. Do w^e hear of Venice 1 We instantly think of the gay and beautiful buildings which surround the Place of St Mark, and the laughing crowds which loiter on its flagged pavement, and the Eastern barbaric magnificence of the church at its one extremity, and the chastened riches of architectural decoration on the three other sides. We think of the granite columns at the entrance of the Piazetta, and the triple-storied pillars which adorn the fronts of the palaces to the great canal, and the gorgeous magnificence of the sun setting over the harbour and the church of St Georo'io-Mao-o-iore and the Redentore from the o-ardens of O CO o St Dominique. Do we hear of Milan ? Instantly the picture of its exquisite cathedral rushes into the mind ; and we see, with all the clearness of actual vision, its snow-white pinnacles, and thousands of glittering statues, rising in gay profusion into the clear blue sky of Italy. Genoa is men- tioned : — We picture to ourselves the varied splendour of the view from the Lantern ; and the piles of palaces, domes, and battlements which are clustered on its slopes, and the blue sea at its foot, and the castellated heights above, and the overwhelming grandeur of the Strada Balbi. Naples : — A beautiful bay arises in the mind, surrounded by pre- cipitous mountains clad with vines and olives, dotted by churches, furrowed by torrents. Long lines of white palaces of stately elevation, with flat roofs, are seen ; domes rise at intervals to break the outline ; castles run far into the sea ; fortresses overhang the dazzling piles ; dark masses of pine and green intervals of foliage are seen among the architectural monuments. Even the recollection of the greatest capitals and most interesting historic scenes of Europe is mainly formed from the impressions of their architectural splendour. The severe simplicity of the Brandenburg Gate, the noble palace, and the imposing elevation of the Academy of Arts at Berlin, reward the traveller for the wearisome monotony of the sands of Prussia. The gigantic grandeur of the monuments of St Petersburg, the stupendous portico of the church of 204 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTUEE. Cazan, the lofty pillar of Alexander, the granite quays, the ricli decorations of the Admiralty and imperial palaces, the streets of columns, and long lines of pillared scenery on either bank of the Neva, befit a capital which aspires to govern half of the world. Even the great name of Napo- leon owes half its lustre to the truly imperial splendour of his architectural conceptions ; and not only his popularity with his subjects, but liis fame among strangers, rest as much now on the monuments of Paris as the conquests of his armies. The chaste simplicity of the Bourse, the lovely pillars of the ^Madeleine, the stupendous grandeur of the arch of Neuilly, the magnificence of the pillar in the Place Vendome, have done as mucli for his fame as the triumph of Austerlitz, the victory of Jena, or the conquest of Tilsit. Rome itself, the mistress of the world, the seat of empire alike in arts and in arms, the first in genius, greatness, and fame, is overshadowed in our recollection by the over- whelming grandeur of St Peter's ; and while its palaces and its temples, its ruins and churches, its galleries and statues, are facling under the lapse of time, its stately dome, the matchless splendour of its interior decoration, survive in our recollection in imperishable lustre, and derive fresh bright- ness from the length of time in which they have been treasured in the stores of memory. Examples of this sort may show the greatness and capa- bilities of which this noble art is susceptible, and the extra- ordinary degree to which it influences the character of a nation in future ages, and the estimate in which it is held by future generations of mankind. From various causes it is fitted to produce a greater and more durable impression on mankind than either poetry, painting, or sculpture. No one can have seen the exquisite peristyle of the Madeleine, the marbled magnificence of the interior of St Peter's, or the majestic arch of Neuilly, without feeling the truth of this observation. Architecture has one immense advantage over all the other rival arts — it is more durable. Edifices of stone or marble endure for ages ; if unassailed by the fury of man, they will survive thousands of years. There is something in this feeling of durability and permanence Avliich adds inexpressibly to their effect, and gives to ancient THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 205 monuments a storied interest wliicli belongs to none of tlie other works of art. What perfection of execution in any other ^york of human genius can rival the impression pro- duced bj the majestic monuments of Carnac and Luxor, still standing in undecayed beauty amidst the wreck of surrounding nations — the same in this hour as when they beheld the armies of Sesostris issue from the hundred gates of Thebes, three thousand fiye hundred years ago '? With what feelings of awe do we approach the temples of Peestum, hoary and emaciated with age ; which were old when Rome was young, and witnessed the adoration of their worshippers, when the Capitol was still a desert cliff, and wild iDeasts formed their dens in the caves of the Palatine ! The Colosseum, with all its matchless grandeur, owes much of its solemnity to the long endurance of its gigantic walls. We recollect that they have witnessed the stately march of the Roman soldiery, and beheld the triumphs of the legions ; that they have resounded with the revels of the emperors, and been sanctified by the heroism of the martyrs ; that they have survived the long night of the Middle Ages, and excited the veneration of the pilgrims, who flocked for a thousand years to the capital of the Faithful. In such cases, it is not a mere monument of art which we admire ; it is a relic of former ages which we venerate, a remnant of the pristine world which we contemplate ; and its time- worn walls are fraught with innumerable associations, and all the undying interest of historical recollection. It is to this cause that much of the extraordinary interest of a great capital, if built of imperishable materials, and adorned by the monuments of successive ages, is owing. A great historic o-allerv rises before us : we see at the same instant the works of successive ages : a glance takes m at once the labour of a thousand years. The changes of manners, the revolutions of opinion, the fleeting objects of national desire, the varying flow of national fortunes, the triumphs of one age, the disasters of another ; the struggles of freedom, the submission of slavery ; the fervour of piety, the neglect of infidelity; the sway of superstition, the selfishness of corruption, all arise in durable and visible array. Each fleeting change has imprinted its character on some lasting monument : and they all stand in grim 206 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF AECHITECTUEE. array, like a gallery of the dead before us, as if to testify at once the greatness, the nothingness, the corruption, and the immortality of man. Embark on that skiff ^Thich will send you forth like an arrow into the middle of the Thames. Those Gothic towers which rise above the flood cover the bones of the Confessor and Alfred ; the Henrys and the Richards of ancient times repose beneath its pave- ment : the antique pile which adjoins it was the dining hall of Stephen. The majestic dome which towers above £very other structure was the contemporary of Marl- borough; a spire in the distance arises from the church, and covers the graves of the Templars ; the massy arches which bestride the flood were erected amidst the fervour of gratitude to Wellington. What are those gay and glittering piles which rise under a brigliter sun, and into a clearer atmosphere, on the banks of a smaller river ? Yonder dark and heavy towers arose amidst the austerity of Gothic taste, and were loaded with the riches of Catholic superstition ; they have witnessed the march of the Crusaders and the coronation of Henry IV. : that gilded dome attests the magnificence of Louis XIV., and covers the bones of Turenne : projecting into the stream is the ancient Tour du Nesle, the theatre of licen- tious tragedy; that beauteous row of columns conceals the windows from whence the massacre of St Bartholomew was ordered; that red obelisk marks the spot where Louis and Marie Antoinette, and Danton and Robespierre, were executed ; that perfect peristyle w^as begun by Napoleon for the Temple of Glory ; that majestic arch in the distance was erected to the honour of the Grand Army. Ascend the Tower of the Capitol, and survey tlie mingled wreck of ages by which you are surrounded. You stand on the massy battlements which defied the arms of Brennus : the Roman senate-house, the palace of the C?esars, are at your feet : that vast circular tomb on the banks of the Tiber contains the ashes of Adrian : yonder stupendous dome, wjiich rises like a mountain in the west, covers the bones of St Paul ; it was reared by the genius of ^lichael Angelo, and adorned by the pencil of Raphael : the sculptured pillars, which surmount all modern edifices in their vicinity, were erected to the honour of Trajan and Antoninus, the greatest and THE BEITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 207 best of the emperors : tliat massy pile wliicli still siirviyes, like the skeleton of a world, the ruin of all its contemporary structures, was reared by the captive hands of the Jews : under those arches the triumph of Aurelian, the captive Zenobia have passed. It is this wondrous and overwhehn- ing concentration of historical interest into one focus, this presenting of it in actual objects to the senses, which con- stitutes the grand, the unequalled charm of arcliitecture, and gives to genius, in tliat department, a lasting hold of the admiration of mankind, which the sister arts will seek in vain to attain. We have prefaced our remarks on British architecture with these observations, which must be familiar to every person of historical information and travelled acquirement, in order to explain the grounds on which we object to the present state of the art amongst us. That we have genius in abundance; that the national taste is strongly running in this direction; that we have wealth to overflowing, and a people who derive sensible pleasure from architectural decoration, is obvious. If any one doubts this, let liim drive from Hyde Park Corner, up Regent Street, and round Regent Park, and if he is candid he will confess, not only that Europe has not such a suite of architectural splendour to exhibit, but that even imagination can hardly outstrip the gorgeous magnificence of the spectacle. But if, after this cursory survey, we examine more in detail the struc- tures which have passed in review, there will be much less room for national exultation. This magnificent array of pillared scenery is almost all composed of the most perish- able materials : in half a century, if not renewed, it will all be levelled with the dust : to preserve its freshness and beauty requires a triennial expenditure on each front, of nearly a Imndred pounds. The tout ensemble, as you advance, is rich and varied; but if the details of each separate edifice are examined, it will be found that many of them are in the most grotesque and barbarous taste : that, in the vain attempt to improve upon or vary the ancient orders, architectural monsters of the most shocking descrip- tion have been produced ; and that not one building is to be seen in the long array which a century hence will exist, or convey to future ages the magnificence of the reign of 208 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTUKE. the last of the Georges. This is a melaucholj considera- tion. Architecture is not, like the art of the upholsterer, conversant only witli perishable materials; its structures are not framed of silk and damask, of ^ood and worsted, like curtains, tables, and carpets. It aims, or should aim, at perpetuity ; and its highest object is to rear those durable monuments whicli, surviving the fleeting changes of fashion, opinion, prosperity, or caprice, are destined to perpetuate, in a visible form, to future ages, the magnificence or grandeur of tlie present. What have we done within the last half century to accomplish this object 1 what durable monuments has London, the capital of half the world, constructed, during the period of its greatest splendour, to impress mankind a thousand years hence ? Has any of our monarchs found it of brick and left it of marble ? Excepting the majestic bridges over the river, and perhaps the Duke of York's pillar, is there one edifice which has been constructed in the age which struck down Napoleon which Mill be in existence five hundred years hence '? And with these exceptions, may not future generations say of this age of magnificence, as Burke did of the British sway in India, that it has left no more permanent monuments of its power than the rhinoceros or the tiger 1 It is no excuse for this monstrous fragility of modern edifices to say that stone is expensive in London ; that its cost precludes it from being used except in public struc- tures; and that it is unjust to reproacli people with a defect imposed upon their metropolis by the deficiencies of nature. Brick, so far from being the most perishable, is in truth the most durable of materials : witness the bricks in the Birs-Nimrod, still preserving the arrow-headed characters as entire as when they were impressed upon them at the time when the waters of the Flood had only recently dried up upon the earth. Let any one look at one of the bricks from Babylon or Nineveh in the public museums, and he will at once be convinced of the endurance of which that substance, when rightly formed, is capable. In truth, so far from beiug rejected as a perishable, brick was selected by the ancients as the most lasting of all substances : Plutarch says, that when rightly hardened, and built in proper perpendicular, it will survive the finest stone. THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 209 and in fact stand for erer. Certain it is, that the brick walls in the baths of Caracalla, the baths of Titus, and the Thernice of Dioclesian, have withstood the decay of time and the fire of the Goths better than either the stone of the Colosseinn, or the marble of the Forum of Trajan ; and these imposing ruins demonstrate of what grandeur a brick building, even when constructed with little regard to orna- ment, but on a sufficiently great and majestic plan, is susceptible. Besides, is London so very poor that it cannot afford, in this its highest period of grandeur and opulence, to bring granite or freestone or marble from its provincial quarries '? Where did the Romans get the granite and marble with which they have constructed the enduring monuments of the Eternal Citv 1 Was it in the Campagna of Rome, or the mountains of Tivoli ? Did not the marble come from Greece, and the granite from Upper Egypt or the quarries of Atlas 'i Enter the church of St Paul's beyond the walls; its three hundred and eighty columns of veined and varie- gated granite were all brought from the recesses of ]\Iauri- tania ; from places so remote that they have eluded the inquisitive eyes of modern travellers. The verde antique, which was brought in such quantities to Rome that its fragments may be picked up like common stones on any of the Seven Hills, all came from quarries not far from the cataracts of the Nile, which have been only recently dis- covered by enterprising travellers. It was from these costly and far distant sources that the Romans drew the materials wherewith to construct their glorious capital ; and is Lon- don, which sways regions of the East unknown to the eagles of the emperors — London, which concentrates within itself the commerce of the world — not able to purchase stone from the mountains of Britain to perpetuate its architectural magnificence 1 Does not the Thames bring water carriage to the very heart of the metropolis 1 Within three miles of the sea, is not the finest freestone to be found on the shores of the Firth of Forth, and granite equal to the hardest Egyptian on the shores of Aberdeen ? Porphyry is to be had in abundance at Peterhead; marble of all colours in the Western Isles. With such materials and such wealth, the ancients would ere this have made London the noblest city VOL. III. 210 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. in Christendom, and constructed monuments wbicli a thou- sand years hence would attract travellers, as do those of the Eternal City, from all parts of the civilised world. Let us not deceive ourselves — it is neither wealth nor materials which we want, but the grandeur of conception which can direct wealth to worthy objects ; and the patient industry, the enduring fortitude which, setting its high resolve upon great things, can undergo the toil, and patiently await the time requisite for their development. Everything now is frittered away to produce an imme- diate impression ; the certain sign that nothing of lasting excellence will be created. Sucli is the frivolous and ephe- meral temper of the times, that neither individuals nor public bodies have patience to wait for the lapse of the period indispensable to produce any work of durable merit ; some- thing brilliant must be produced, and that too right speedily, or the artist's reputation is at an end. Our architects must answer the demands of the public, and luorh to time, or they are speedily consigned to the garret. Mushroom rows of buildings, with brilliant stuccoed and meretricious fronts, are run up as rapidly as an order for Manchester goods is executed ; the artist seems as much afraid as his employers that, if the season is allowed to pass by, the taste for his production will be at an end. Hence the monstrous insuffi- ciency and gaudy character of many of the most ornamental new streets, and even public edifices, in London : and hence the insane attempt, so painfully conspicuous, to vary and improve upon the Grecian orders ; an attempt which will succeed when mathematicians succeed in improving upon the forms of the triangle, the circle, and the ellipse — but not till then. All this is useless, and worse than useless. It habituates tiie public to a meretricious and unchaste style of building, totally inconsistent with permanent merit ; and wastes vast riches on the ephemeral brilliancy of a few years, which, if applied to edifices of a simpler and more durable character, would both form the public taste, and produce works worthy of immortal endurance. The lamentable thing is, that it was not thus in former times ; and that this deplorable insufficiency and haste of building has arisen, for the first time in our history, at that very stage of our national progress when a more manly style THE BPJTISH SCHOOL OF AECHITECTURE. 211 might have been anticipated ; at that period of national growth when Augustus found Rome of brick and left it of marble. Our ancestors did not produce, indeed, long rows of pillared edifices — w^hited sepulchres, with a thin coating of stucco, concealing a charnel-house of brick — but thej constructed works which will stand for centuries, and attract the admiration of men till time has levelled them with the dust. Witness the stately cathedrals, the w^ork of ages, which arose in every See of Britain, all formed of durable materials, and of such extraordinary beauty that subsequent generations have been unable to equal, far less excel them. Witness the noble castles, whose ruins are still to be seen in the green fields of merry England, and whose massy battlements, after braving the storms of six hundred years, look down with contempt on the successive generations of mushroom buildings which arise and fall at their feet. It was not thus when the towering genius of Sir Christopher Wren raised the majestic dome of St Paul's — a structure which, if it had possessed the portico w^hich he designed for it, would have been the most sublime edifice, so far as external form goes, that the piety of man had ever erected to the honour of his Creator. It was not thus when that beautifid church was raised, then in the obscurity of alleys, which now, in Trafalgar Square, puts to shame all the ephemeral plaster work with which it is surrounded ; or when the genius of the Freemasons, in the days of Henry VII., produced the unrivalled grace of his sepulchral chapel. What ! are we to be seriously told that stone is so expensive that it is beyond the reach of the national resources, even for public edifices intended to stand for centuries, when it w^as brought in abundance into every corner of England in the days of our Henrys and our Edwards to construct the cathedrals, and when, amidst the poverty and distraction of the Plantagenet reigns, the monks of Canterbury imported it from Normandy to construct the beautiful edifice which still covers the tomb of the Black Prince '? Can the nation which could borrow a thousand millions to strike down Napoleon not emulate the works of monks and abbots in an age when England only contained two millions of inhabi- tants, and the national revenue was only £200,000 a-yearl We repeat it — it is not wealth which we want : the wealth 212 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTUEE. which is annually squandered in London on carriages, dogs, and horses, Tvould speedily make it the noblest city in the universe. It is the taste to give it a right direction ; the enduring spirit T\diich can submit to present sacrifice for the sake of future excellence ; the greatness of soul which, dis- daining the fleeting or ephemeral luxuries which wealth can command, fixes its aspirations on those works of a lasting character which stamp immortality upon the age in which they arose. We often speak of the French as a gay and volatile race, incapable of steadily pursuing any object for any length of time together ; fickle in their passions, fickler still in their attachments, and totally unworthy to enter the list with the sober steadfast march of the English people. Will France, however, or England, stand highest two hundred years hence, from the monuments of the age of Napoleon and Wellington which they have left 1 Future generations will then, as now, look with undiminished interest on the splendid monuments of Paris. The majestic arch of Keuilly, the imposing portico of the Pantlieon, the lovely peristyle of the Madeleine, the chaste simplicity of the Bourse, the noble pillar of Austerlitz, will attract, as now, crowds from every corner of the world to the centre of modern architectural beauty. What will London have to show to stand in com- parison 1 What will the conquering nation have to exhibit to rival the trophies of the vanquished \ Where will our descendants, two hundred years hence, find the monument voted to Trafalgar ; where the tribute of a nation's gratitude to the heroes of Waterloo % Every one of the brilliant piles from Hyde Park Corner to the Colosseum, which now attract our passing admiration, will be levelled with the dust, or stand in grim and black desolation, hke the streets of Vicenza, after all the plaster and ornamental work has fallen down. The wave of fashion will have rolled in another direction ; the expense of keeping up the present fronts will be felt as intolerable, and Regent Street and the Park, if they exist at all, will be a frightful ghastly monu- ment of an ephemeral age. We are not insensible to the beauty of many of the modern edifices of London : the Post-office, St Pancras in the Fields, Marylebone Church, and above all, the arches at THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTUEE. 213 Hyde Park Corner ; but thej are not for a moment to be put in comparison with the structures reared during the same period at Paris or St Petersburg. When we approach the portico of the church of Cazan at the latter metropolis, the subUme statue of the Czar Peter standiu^: on its orranite pedestal, ^Yeighing eighteen hundred tons, or the noble pillar to Alexander, we feel as if, coming from London, we had passed from the works of pigmies to those of giants. Every thing in the English capital is neat, elegant, and sumptu- ous ; the plaster fronts are delicately moulded ; they are in general clean, and washed with a warm tint ; sculpture adorns the pediments ; columns and statues are to be seen in abundance. But all is on a Lilliputian scale in point of magnitude, and ephemeral in point of endurance ; nothing indicates a people whose taste is grand and elevated either in their public or private structures. Everything in the Russian metropolis bespeaks solidity, permanence, and majesty. Granite paves the streets, granite composes the columns, nations appear to have been employed in the con- struction of monuments calculated for eternal endurance. English travellers long turned into ridicule the slow pro- gress, under the Bourbon princes, of the public monu- ments commenced by Napoleon ; year after year the work- men were to be seen chipping at the capitals, or polishing the columns. Regent Street, during their slow growth, rose up at once in complete lustre, and the English began to flatter themselves that their capital was about to become the most beautiful in Europe. Now, however, the works are done ! after thirty years^ labour the scaffolding is removed, the workmen have disappeared, and while the plaster fronts of the English structures are already beginning to decay, or show in gaping fissures but too clearly the perishable nature of their materials, the Parisian monuments stand forth pure and briUiant in their first youth, destined to captivate man- kind for hundreds of years. To these general observations on the ephemeral or perish- able nature of the English monuments, an exception must be made in the case of those structures which are for pur- poses of acknowledged utility, as our bridges, docks, aque- ducts, canals, and roads. Unquestionably, the age which has produced London and Waterloo Bridges, the Manches- 214 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF AECHITECTURE. ter Railway, tlie Caledonian Canal, tlie Thames Tunnel, the Menai i3ridge, Pont Cysilte Aqueducts, and the West India Docks, need not fear a comparison with the public works of the same description of any other people. Gran- deur of conception, durability of materials, respect for futurity, characterise all these undertakings. But it is from the very grandeur of these usefd works, and the compara- tively tritiing nature of all destined to mere ornament, that we augur worst of the spirit of the age in this particular. It is evident that we want neither wealth to execute, nor genius to conceive, great works worthy of our reputation in other respects. It is the mania for ivltat is to pi^ocluce a return which paralyses all our efforts. We have become a mere race of utilitarians, or, what is worse, of selfish and grasping men. Nothing is undertaken on a scale worthy either of the age or of posterity, unless it promises a good dividend. We are, in truth, a nation of shopkeepers. The impatience of the democratic, the selfishness of the mercan- tile spirit, have got possession not only of the national councils, but the public taste. The love for the great, the future, and the excellent, has been superseded by the passion for the useful, the {)resent, the brilliant. Profit is all in all. We have sadly degenerated from our ancestors. Our orna- mental structures no longer resemble the stately castles and cathedrals of former times ; but rather the towers, draw- bridges, and palaces which were painted on the canvass tents of the nobility in the Polish diets, which cast a fleet- ing lustre over the scenes of those stormy assemblages, and when they were dispersed vanished for ever ! Mercantile habits are far from beino- inconsistent with the enduring and elevated spirit which produces the grand and the beautiful in the fine arts ; witness the matchless glories of the Acropolis, the imposing streets of Genoa, the marble palaces of Venice, the perfection of architecture at Florence, the venerable piles of Ghent. On the contrary, when rightly directed, they are the best foundation for excellence in these departments ; because they provide the wealth necessary for their construction, and at the same time induce that liberality of mind, and custom of large expendi- ture on great objects, which are essential to success in all the higher walks of human genius. England, till within THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE. 215 these few years, has been guided by an aristocracy combin- ing the most eminent in rank, ^yealtll, and talent ; and their sway, if no longer paramount in the legislature, is at least still predominant in all the educated classes of the people. How, then, has it happened that a nation pre-eminent in the aristocratic turn of its habits and inclinations, and once so remarkable for the grandeur and sublimity of its public structures, should now be so deplorably superficial in its ideas in these respects, and opeidy proclaim itself incapable of undertaking any work which is to take five years in building ? We profess ourselves unable to account for such a degradation, if it is not to be found in that parsimonious and shortsighted spirit which, for twenty years, has been increasing with the growth of popular influence amongst us, and at last produced the great convulsion of 1832. During all this time, Government was disabled from undertaking any great or durable works, (with the exception of Windsor Castle, which was defrayed from that " Godsend,'' the repay- ment of the Austrian loan,) by the incessant clamour of the popular party against unnecessary expenditure, and the growing jealousy of the people at any works of magnificence on the part of their rulers. Sti'ange to say, the popular party, during all that period, not only took no interest in national structures erected by Government, but rather felt an antipathy to them. They considered them as a culpable display of luxury on the part of a bankrupt establishment, and oTudo-ed every shillinor laid out on works which were not peculiar to the Sovereign, but the common patrimony of the nation. Hence the long peace which followed the capture of Paris has been a complete blank as to any great or worthy architectural monument on the part of Government. But it is Government in the later stages of society which can alone originate all great edifices, and, by the love for the durable and majestic thus created, influence the taste of the nation, and determine the character of private struc- tures, or of voluntary associations of individuals. With us the master-spirit has been awanting, the key-note has not been struck ; and hence the insulated efl'orts of individuals have wasted themselves on perishable or unworthy struc- tures, and the national taste, in an age of wealth, luxury, and refinement, has taken an entirely wrong direction. 216 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECT UKE. Democratic societies arc occasionally capable of rearing the most admirable monuments ; but in all such cases, it ^•ill be found that, though in form a republic, tlie supreme power has in reality been lodged in a single individual or a few persons, wliose talents, eloquence, or popular arts liaye given them undisputed authority. The republic of Athens erected the matchless peristyle of the Parthenon, the impos- ing gateway of the Propyleum ; but it was at a period when the talents of Pericles had given him, for a long course of years, an unresisted authority, and when the influence of Athens was able to turn to the embellisliment of their city the common treasures of Greece at Delphi. Hence his well- known saying to one of tlie Grecian demagogues, who com- plained of the expenditure, that if the people of Athens OTudoed the cost of the edifices, let them inscribe them with his name, and he would defray it himself. Mercantile wealth has often, as in Tyre, Carthage, and the modern Italian or Flemish cities, been the parent of architectural splendour, but in all such cases it was a proud and high- minded aristocracy who were the real rulers of the state, and practically intrusted with the direction of the affairs. A genuine democracy is at once shortsighted and selfish, stingy and rapacious ; parsimonious to all other parties or objects, avaricious and rapacious for its own advantages, or the fortunes of its favourite leaders ; and such a spirit is the precise reverse of the disposition required for architectural greatness, which of all other tilings requires most the ele- Tated views, grandeur of conception, and durability of design, which belong to bodies whose interests and habits are detached from the shifting quicksands of popular adminis- tration, and fixed on the permanent character of aristocratic government. America, while she continues republican, will never produce any edifices worthy of being put in comparison with the cathedrals, castles, monuments, and palaces of the old world. Hence the astonishment and admiration of its ingenuous citizens at the majestic edifices of that description in modern Europe. France produced none during the days of her republican frenzy ; the magnificence of Paris is all to be referred to the reigns of Louis XIV. and Napoleon. During the Convention and the Directory enormous fortunes were made by the civil and military employes of the Repub- THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTUEE. 217 licau Goyernment, but nothing great or durable in the arts or public structures was attempted by the public rulers. They had plenty of fetes, spectacles, and banners, but not one structure of lasting magnificence or utility set on foot :* and like them the Reform mobs in Great Britain four years ago overspread the land ^Yith banners, processions, and tricolor flags ; but have not yet reared one monument higher than the foundation stone, in honour of ^laxima Charta, or the Father of the Reform Bill. The unfortunate circumstance of stone or marble not being found in the neighbourhood of London has undoubt- edly had a most prejudicial efi'ect, not only on the durability, but on the character of its architectural edifices. If the free- stone quarries of Craigleith, near Edinburgh, had existed at Highgate or Hampstead, not only would the metropolis have been constructed of lasting materials, but their solidity and cost would have stamped a character of simplicity and grandeur upon its architecture, which constitute the only foundations of real excellence. It is impossible to construct long rows of whited sepulchres with stone : tlie meretricious and overloaded ornament of modern London would have efiectually vanished with the mere use of a hard material for building. There is no end to stucco friezes or statues : it is easy to cast capitals, according to " Mr Nash's positive order,'^ in a mould, and whitewash them to resemble free- stone ; but it is not so easy a matter to play these antic tricks with solid masonry, or run the risk of destroying a sumptuous edifice by the ridiculous attempt to efi'ect innova- tions in the Grecian orders. If the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square had been constructed of stone, it would never have exhibited the pepper boxes and vitiated taste which makes all Englishmen blush who recollect the Louvre or the Vatican. Had Buckingham House been built, as it should have been, of freestone or marble, it would never have exhibited that overloaded ornament and unbecoming proportion which, notwithstanding much beauty of detail, render it no fit palace for the kings of England. We are far from wishing to encourage the vanity which provincials in general, and the citizens of Edinburgh in * The Pantheon, though disgi-aced by the boues of Marat, was both begun and finished by the Bourbon dynasty. 218 THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF AECHITECTUEE. particular, are so apt to exhibit ; but we must saj, tliat the effect of its admirable freestone is most conspicuous in the purer taste and more manlj character of building in the Scottish metropolis ; and that two hundred years hence, not only many more, but more perfect monuments of this age will be found within its walls, than in the vast circumference of London. Where will then be the long rows of pillared scenery which now adorn Regent Street, Hyde Park, the Strand, and Regent Park % Reduced to its stone edifices, how much will London have to exhibit \ Even then, how- ever, the simpler, less ornamented, and humbler edifices of Edinburgh will be flourishing in undiminished beauty ; and all the acquisitions of subsequent ages will be mingled with the structures of the present, to exhibit a united mass of architectural splendour. It is an easy matter for the citizens of London, revelling in their superior wealth and in the possession of the seat of government, to deride the fourteen columns, the fragment of a mighty undertaking, on the Calton Hill. Those fourteen columns, formed on the purest and chastest model, are the same benefit to the arts and public taste which the poems of Virgil or Homer are to literature ; they will exist, if not destroyed by external violence, for thousands of years, and be admired when the meretricious piles of London are reduced to heaps of their mother clay. Even now, they are the most imposing objects of the kind in Britain ; they impress strangers more than any modern edifice in the island ; and if the structure is completed, by the munificence of donations or bequests, on the same scale of primeval magnificence, it will give to the Scottish metropolis a distinction beyond Avhat any capital in Europe can boast. Much of the sublimity of this unfinished structure, as of its far-famed original on the Acropolis of Athens, is to be ascribed to the great blocks of stone of which it is com- posed. Those who have seen the gate of Agamemnon at Mycena?, in Greece, or the Cyclopian walls of Volterra, in Italy, will be at no loss to appreciate the immense effect of such massive blocks in the production of architectural effect. It compensates in a degree which, a prior}, could scarcely be credited, the deficiency of height or magnitude. Stone- henge, rising like the work of giants on the solitude of THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF AECHITECTURE. • 219 Salisbury Plain, impresses . the mind with a feeling of a^ye beyond any edifice in Britain : the monolithe obelisks and gateways of Luxor exceed in sublimity the tenfold bulk of York cathedral. This important element of effect is totally lost in stuccoed buildings ; and not only is it lost, but the jiublic taste, liabituated to the overloaded ornament and varied style of which plastic work is susceptible, becomes insensible to the severe simplicity and imposing grandeur of earlier art. The destruction of both houses of Parliament by fire has now afforded an opportunity of reconstructing tliose vener- able halls on a scale suited to the riches and magnificence of the age, and in a style derived from our ancestors, adapted to the Gothic origin and time-worn buttresses of our con- stitution. Here, then, is an opportunity of redeeming the age from the obloquy to which it has become exposed from the gaudy attire and ephemeral character of its metropolitan edifices, and erecting at least one structure worthy of beiug placed beside the noble monuments of St Petersburg and Paris, in the architectural race of the nineteenth century. Let us hope that the precious opportunity will not be lost of erect- ing an edifice entirely of stoiie, fire-proof, and worthy of being the palace of the constitution which its authors boast of as having effected so great an improvement on the old English government. Even democratic jealousy will hardly envy the grandeur of the reformed House of Commons ; democratic stinginess will not grudge what is laid out on the sovereign palace of the people. Now, then, is the time to adopt a truly princely view of the subject ; to erect a work on such a scale of durability as may defy alike the war of elements, the decay of time, and the madness of the people ; and by rearing one simple and majestic edifice in the metro- polis, gradually wean the public taste from that flimsy and overloaded style which has arisen in this country from acci- dental causes before the natural period of the corruption of taste, and promises, if not checked, to deprive future ages of all the legacies which they should receive from the wealth, the power, and the genius of the present. S I S M N D I [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, May 1845] Nevee was there a jiister observation than that, in ordinary times, in the same state, genius moves in a circle; originality is lost amidst imitation ; we breathe tliought not less than vital air. This is more especially the case in all those branches of opinion or philosophy which relate to internal economy, or the social concerns of men. There, it is not merely abstract principle or disinterested reasoning which liave struck their roots into the human mind ; interest, pre- judice, passion, have moved it yet more deeply, and rendered the change from one set of opinions to another still more difficult. Universally it will be found, that in regard to the social concerns of men, which are so closely interwoven with our habits, interests, and affections, the transition from error to truth can rarely be accomplislied by any intellect, how powerful soever, which has not imbibed, in part at least, the maxims of foreign states. New ideas, like lightning, are produced by the blending of two streams of thought, wafted from different ages or parts of the world. The French political revolution was brought about by the meeting of new-born French fervour with long-established English ideas : the Anglomania which immediately preceded that convulsion is the proof of it. The English social revolution has proceeded from the same cause ; it is the junction of British practical habits with French speculative views which has produced the political economy of modern times; and the whole doctrines of free trade which Adam Smith matured, and recent times have reduced to practice, are to FAudes des Sciences Sociahs. Par J. C. Simonde de Sismo>-di. 3 Vols. Paris : 1837. SISMOXDI. 221 be found in the Physiocratie of Dupont de Nemours, and the political pamphlets of Turgot. It was in the year 1 775 that these doctrines, imported from France, were first broached in this country by the publication of the Wealth of Nations ; and it took half a century for tbem to pass from the solitary meditation of the recluse to the cabinets of statesmen and the hustings of the populace. Now, however, this transformation of thought is general, at least in a considerable part of tlie mercantile and manufacturing portions of the community. Few in the great cities of the empire think of doubting the doctrines of free trade; fewer still, if they doubt them, venture to give publicity to their opinions. The reason of this general con- currence among commercial men, and of this — in social mat- ters — rapid conversion of general thought, is to be found in the circumstance, that the new opinions fell in with the interests, or at least the immediate interests, of the leaders and influential men among the mercantile classes. The remainder, not understanding the subject, yielded by degrees to what they were told, by their superiors in wealth and intelligence, were incontrovertible propositions. Manufac- turers who enjoyed the advantages of coal, ironstone, canals, railroads, and harbours at their doors, very readily embraced the doctrine that all restrictions on commercial intercourse were contrary to reason ; and that all mankind, how desti- tute soever of these advantages themselves, could do nothing so wise as to admit all their goods without any protective duties whatever. Merchants widely engaged in mercantile speculations, who were buying and selling in all parts of the world, and whose interest it was to purchase as largely and as cheaply as possible, and to sell as extensively and as clearly as was consistent with that extent, had no difficulty in arriving at the conclusion that commerce should be left perfectly free, that all duties for tlie protection of native industry should be abolished, and tliat the only charges on the importation of goods should be the cost of transit and their own profits. Every shiUing taken from the import duties was so much put in their pockets, either directly by their gaining the remitted duty, or by their indirectly feeling the benefit of it in the reduction of price and the widening of the market. Capitalists and bankers, 222 SISMOITDI. ^\^lio liad Yast sums to lend, found nothing so reasonable as that they should be permitted, without restraint, to exact any amount of usuiy tliey chose from the necessities, the folly, or the cupidity of tlicir debtors. The opinion became general, that a nation could only be made rich by the same means as an individual manufacturer, and tliat the excess of money obtained for the produce of national labour above the cost of production, or the price paid, was the measure of national wealth. Under the influence of these opinions, prohibitions, restrictions, and import duties gave way on all sides. To the huge mass of the ignorant vulgar, the very sound of " abolition of restrictions'^ was deliglitful. Restraint was what they hated, exclusive privilege was their abomination, liberty of thought and action their supposed elysium. To abolish monopolies, incorporations, crafts, guildries, and statutes of apprenticeship, seemed a mighty step in the emancipation of the human race. Thus they cordially and universally joined in the cry for liberation from every sort of restriction, alike in thought, commerce, industry, and action, which had been first raised by the philosophers, and afterwards generally embraced by the capitalists and mer- chants. Amidst a chorus of congratulations, mutual applauses, and sanguine anticipations, with the cordial approbation of the political economists, the general concurrence of the mer- chants, and the loud shouts of the multitude, the doctrines of free trade were progressively applied to every part of the social body. Taxes upon imports have been diminished, till, on all save a few articles, tliey are now entirely removed; native industry has been exposed, with a very slender pro- tection, to the competition of foreign states; the restraints on the exportation of macliinery have been removed, to allow foreign nations every advantage in competing with us; punishment has been alleviated, till the penalty of death, save in cases of wilful murder, has become practically abolislied. The liberty of tlie press has been pushed the length of allowing without control its utmost licentiousness ; unbounded toleration permitted in matters of 0})inion, even so far as generally to proclaim impunity to the worst Chartist or Socialist doctrines ; combinations among workmen to raise their wages declared legal, and carried into practice on the siSMONDi. 223 greatest scale in all the manufacturing districts; a great orga- nic change introduced into the constitution, to render Govern- ment more thorouglily dependent on public opinion. Taxes to the amount of above thirty millions sterling, on articles of consumption, have been repealed in less than thirty years ; a vast monetary change, to lower prices by raising the value of money, has been introduced, and steadily enforced, in spite of unbounded consequent distress ; and the principle of free competition introduced generally as the basis of the social union, the only sure guarantee of national prosperity. " Experience," says Dr Johnson, " is the great test of truth, and is perpetually contradicting the theories of men." Never, since the beginning of the world, had the doctrines of philosophers been so generally embraced by Government, or measures really intended for the public good so exten- sively carried into effect by the Legislature. Unbounded were the anticipations of prosperity and happiness in which men generally indulged on tiie adoption of this system ; inflexible has been the steadiness with which it has been adhered to, amidst an amount of suffering which would long ago have proved fatal to any set of measures among men, except those dictated by their own opinions. But amidst all these anticipations, and this steadiness in carrying out the doctrines of free trade in every department of thought and action, various unpleasant indications soon began to manifest themselves in every part of society ; and it became evident to all that the fruits of the tree of knowledge were not, in this generation at least, destined to be different from what they had proved to our First Parents. While wealth was increasing to an unparalleled extent among the com- mercial classes, suffering and distress as generally ensued among the rural inhabitants ; and the multitude of ruined fortunes among them rendered it certain, that at no distant period the old race of landed proprietors would, with tlie exception of a few magnates, be all rooted out, and their place supplied by a new set of purchasers from the commer- cial towns. While population was advancing with unparal- leled strides in the manufacturing districts, pauperism even more than kept pace with it in all ; and the extraordinary fact has now been revealed by statistical researches, that, in an age of unparalleled w^ealth and general and long-continued 224 SISMONDI. peace, a seventh part of the \yliole inhabitants of the British islands are in a state of destitution, or painfully supported bj legal relief'" While all attempts even to pay off the national debt have been abandoned by Goyernment, and the principle is openly proclaimed by the Prime ^Minister, that any surplus of revenue above expenditure must, to relieve the necessities of tlie country, be applied to the reduction of taxation, without a thought to the reduction of the debt ; the Home Secretary has announced the not less alarming fact, that, since the peace, above two hundred millions sterling, or a fourth of the national debt, has been raised for the relief of the poor in England alone. While the returns of the income-tax have demonstrated that a hundred and fifty thousand persons in Great Britain possess among them an annual revenue of two hundred millions a-year, or above £1200 each on an average, the melancholy fact has been revealed, by the result of attempts to increase the national revenue by means of indirect taxation, that that source of income can no longer be relied on ; and in a time of pro- found, and at the close of a period of long-continued peace, it has become indispensable to recur to an assessment on property and to direct taxation, as it was in Rome in the decaying periods of the empire. The blue folios of the Houses of Parliament teem with authentic and decisi^^e evidence of the vast increase, during the last thirty years, of crime and frequent destitution among the working classes in all parts of the empire. Every four or five years a brief feverish period of gambling, extravagance, and com- mercial prosperity, is succeeded by a long and dreary season of anxiety, distress, and depression ; frightful strikes among the workmen, attended with boundless distress among, and hideous democratic tyranny over them, invariably succeed in the close of those periods of suffering, as pestilence stalks in the rear of famine ; and popular insurrection has become Viz. :— In Ireland, .... 2,300,000 „ England, .... 1,500,000 „ Scotland, .... 200,000 4,000,000 Just a seventh of the whole inhabitants, who are now about 28,000,000. SISMONDI. 225 SO common, that it is a rare thing to see two years pass oyer without martial law being of necessity practically enforced in some parts of the empire. Efforts unheard of have been made to extend the religious establishments of the state, or augment the means of moral and intellectual instruction among the people — but hitherto with no perceptible effect in checking the habits of sensuality, improvidence, and in- temperance, which prevail amongst them ; and in an age and a country abounding, beyond any other that ever existed, with declamations in favour of the blessings of knowledge, and the elements of happiness and moral im- provement, which free trade and a general liberation from restraint were to procure for society, the scandal has been exhibited of serious crime having, during the last forty years, increased tex times as fast as the number of the people." We are so accustomed in this country to those things, that they have ceased to make any impression upon us. The great majority of men actively engaged in the business of life pay no attention to them whatever, but go on labouring to make money, or keep themselves afloat in the world, without bestowing even a passing thought of whither that world on which they are so intent is tending. Philo- sophers and poHtical economists, confounded at beholding such results flowing from the adoption and practical appli- cation of their favourite principles, quietly pass by on the other side; and, without denying the facts, content them- selves with disregarding them .altogether, and continuing to prophesy, amidst general disaster, unbounded national pros- perity and moral elevation from the ultimate effect of the further abolition of restraint on thought and action. The religious portion of the community — and they form a large and highly respectable body — consider these alarming * Committals for serious crime, in — Population of Great England. Scotland. Ireland. • Total. Britain and Ireland. 1805, 4,605 89 3,600 8,284 15,800,000 1819, 14,254 1,380 13,251 28,885 20,600,000 1842, 31,369 3,884 21,352 56,605 27,300,000 —Porter's Pari. Tables and Prog, of the Nation, iii. 172, 227. From this table it appears tliat from 1805 to 1842 the population of the em- pire has advanced from 158 to 273— that is, increased about 10 per cent ; while serious crime has increased from 8 to 56— that is, 700 per cent. Crime, there- fore, has augmented ten times as fast as the number of the people. YOL. III. P 226 SISMONDI. symptoms as the judgment of Heaven upon us for our sins, and the natural and well-deserved consequence of our neglect of the means of salvation, which have been so merci- fully put into our hands. The merchants and manufac- turers, who are sometimes rapidly making fortunes under the new system, maintain that it is founded on pure and tried reason, and that in no other way can the national resources be fully developed. The landowners, who are as rapidly losing them, are, in part, so paralysed by their individual embarrassments, in part so perplexed with the intricacy of the subject, that they are incapable of making any efforts, except on particular occasions, in their own defence, but resign themselves quietly to the stroke of fate, as the Moslem does to the bowstring of the Sultan. The working classes are quiet during the brief periods of pros- perity; but nourish in tkeir hearts at all times a profound jealousy and hatred of the moneyed interest. The opinion is almost universally diffused among them, that the gains of their employers are scandalously great, and wrung out of their heart's blood — that they and their masters are natu- rally at war with each other — and that whatever is gained by the one is lost by the other. Meanwhile Government, obeying the new, and, as matters stand, irresistible impulse let in upon the monarchy by the Reform Bill, quietly, and without any attempt at consistency, shde into the principles and measures dictated to them by the dominant, most active, and most influential class in the state ; and, shutting their eyes to the consequences in future times, content themselves with getting through the present with as much practical support and as little obloquy as possible. But although this is, generally speaking, the state of opinion on all social questions in the British islands, it may well be imagined that they are looked upon with very dif- ferent eyes by men of intelligence out of the whirl of passing events, and beyond the reach of the passions or interests which mislead so many in this country. The civilisation of - Great Britain ; the social questions at issue amongst us ; the experiment making, on so extended a scale, of the effect of the new doctrines on the happiness of the people in the British islands ; the prodigious wealth which has been accu- mulated in this country in a few hands of late years ; the SISMONDT. 227 magnitude and long duration of our political power ; and the celebrity in arts, in arms, and in literature we have long enjoyed, have struck all surrounding nations with astonish- ment, which, so far from diminishing, is hourly on the increase. This effect appears variously, according to tlie temper and previous prepossessions of those among whom it has taken place. In the French, our ancient rivals, our persevering antagonists in the revolutionary war, it has pro- duced no other effect, generally speaking, but envy, hatred, and malice. In the Americans, it has engendered a mingled feeling of respect, admiration, and jealousy, which appears in the strenuous efforts they are making to augment their wealth, power, and territory, by every possible means, and in every possible direction. But in reflecting minds on the Continent, on the really great in all countries, it has pro- duced the effect of deep reflection and anxious investigation. They have already begun to contemplate the astonishing and long-continued empire of Great Britain as we, and all sub- sequent ages, have so long done the corresponding and parallel dominion reared by the arms of the Roman legions. In the causes of the greatness, and seeds of ruin, in both, there is a striking, and to us portentous, resemblance. The analogy has been already traced by more than one master- hand on the Continent. But none was better qualified to do justice to the subject, or has treated it in a more lumi- nous or philosophic spirit, than Sismondi ; and it is to his observations on tlie present social state of the British empire that we have now to direct our readers' attention. As the views of this great philosopher and historian are almost entirely at variance with those which now generally prevail amongst us, and to which the Liberal party in every part of the country have in an especial manner pinned their faith, and as they at the same time seem to be deserving of very great attention from their novelty and importance, and direct bearing on the dearest interests of the society with which we are surrounded — we hasten to premise that, in forming them, Sismondi has at least not been blinded by any political partiaUty for the side to which, in social ques- tions, he inclines. He is, as all persons acquainted with foreign literature well know, a decided Liberal, indeed republican, in his political opinions. Born and educated in 228 SISMONDI. the democratic cantou of Geneva, a Protestant both by birth and connexion, the decided opponent of tyranny in all its forms, of Romish domination in all its guises, he first matured his powerful mind in ^vriting the history of the Italian repubUcs, and afterwards had his opinions confirmed by tracing the long annals of the French monarchy. The bril- liant episodes in the history of the former, contrasted with the hideous catalogue of persecutions and crimes which stain the latter, have confirmed in his mind — to a degree which, considerinor the extent of his information and candour of his thoughts, appears surprising — the original prepossessions he had imbibed in favour of republican institutions. He even carries this so far as to advocate in his Essays, which form the immediate subject of this paper, an elective in preference to a hereditary monarchy. He is as ardent an enthusiast in the cause of civil and religious liberty as Russell or Sid- ney, though his views are modified as to time, by observa- tion and experience. He yields to none of the optimist school of more recent times in sanguine expectations of the benefits which may be expected from training the people to the duties of self-government, and ultimately intrusting them with its powers. He is adverse to a hereditary aristocracy, and strongly advocates the division of landed property, by adopting in all countries the law of equal succession, which has given its powers their deathblow both in France and America. His life has been spent in painting the bright efllorescence of freedom and genius in the modern Itahan republics, and their long blight under the combined powers of feudal tyranny and Romish superstition in the French monarchy. The perfection of society, in his estimation, would be an aggregate of little republics, like those of Greece or southern Italy in ancient, or of Holland, Florence, Pisa, or Genoa, in modern times — in which supreme power was vested in the hands of magistrates, named by the heads of trades, who had been themselves elected by the general sufirage of their respective bodies. ^lany readers will probably be surprised at finding such political opinions enter- tained by a man of such acquirements, and class it with the numerous instances which history affords, of the inability of the greatest minds entirely to throw off the sway of early impressions and hereditary prepossessions. But we are not SISMOXDI. 229 concerned, in this place, with Sismondi's political opinions ; it is his views on social questions that appear peculiarly important, and which we are desirous of making known to our readers. And we mention his political opinions in order to show, that he at least cannot be accused of a pre- judice in favour of the monarchical or aristocratic side of the question. It is from a leaning to and sympathy with the opposite class in society, that his strong and important views on the tendency of social change in Europe, and especially in Great Britain and France, are directed. He is decidedly of opinion that this tendency is, to the last degree, disas- trous ; tliat it is it which is the cause of the continued depression of industry, degradation of character, and increase of depravity and crime, among the people ; and that so great and alarming are these causes of evil, that, unless they are arrested by a change of opinion among the influential classes of society, or the good providence of God, they will infallibly destroy the whole fabric of European civilisation, as they did that of the ancient world. They are, in his own opinion, the more alarming, that they have sprung, not from the blighting, but from the triumph, of what we call civilisa- tion : not from the retention of men in ignorance, but from their advance in knowledge ; not from the upholding of restraint, but from its removal. All these, the former evils with which mankind had to contend, will, in his opinion, yield to the growth of industry and the progress of knowledge ; but in their stead a new set of evils — more serious, more wide- spread, more irremediable — will rise up, which, to all appear- ance, must in the end destroy all the states of modern Europe. England and France he considers, and probably with reason, as the states most likely to be the first victims of those social evils, far more serious and irremediable than any of the political which attract so much attention, and are the objects of such vehement contention between the parties into which society is divided. England and France are not alone exposed to the danger ; all the other European states are advancing in the same career, and are threatened, in the end, with the same calamities. England and France have been the first to be reached and are now most endangered by them, only because they are in advance of 230 SISMOXDl. the others in the career of knowledge, freedom, and civilisa- tion, and have attained more rapidly than their neiglibours the power and energy by which modern society is distin- guished, and the perils by which it is menaced. In the social evils, therefore, with which Great Britain is now environed, he sees the precursor of those which are certainly, at one period or another, to afflict all Europe ; and in the overthrow of our empire, from the corroding effect of the calamities they will induce, the ultimate destiny of all the states of modern times. That these yiews are melancholy, all will admit ; that they are new, at least in this country, will be conceded by the best informed. They come, however, recommended to us, not merely by the powerful arguments and copious facts by which they are supported, but by the peculiar turn of mind and varied qualifications of the author by whom they are brought forward. We have long been of opinion, that it is the separation of political economy from history which is the chief cause of the numerous errors into which, since the days of Adam Smith, its professors have been betrayed, and the general discredit into which the science itself has fallen with a large portion of the thinking men in the com- munity. This effect has taken place, as it was very natural it should in the infancy of a science, from the habit into which philosophers and men of abstract thought were led of reasoning on human affairs as if they were the movement of inanimate bodies, and considering only their own argu- ments, not the illustration of their truth or falsehood which experience has afforded. This habit is peculiarly conspi- cuous in the advocates of free trade, the reciprocity system, and Mr Malthus's doctrines on pauperism and the poor-laws. They rest on abstract arguments, and are perfectly indif- ferent to the refutation of their principles which every day's experience is affording. Probably the whole present gene- ration of political economists must go to their graves before this general error is eradicated from the human mind. It is an error, however, of the most fatal kind, and one which, while it is persevered in, must render political economy one of the greatest of the many curses which the eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge has let loose upon mankind. It is like a system of medicine, formed, as such systems are in SISMOXDT. 231 every age, not on experience or observation, but on the theories of certain physicians on the structure of the human body, and the proper way of developing its various func- tions. Many a patient in every age has been killed, before the absurdity of such theories has been put down by the experience and common-sense of mankind. And many a nation, in Sismondi's opinion, will perish before the nostrums of its state physicians have been expelled from the general opinion of man. It is his profound and varied historical information, which has given Sismondi his deep distrust of nearly all the conclusions of modern political economy, and inspired him with the gloomy presentiments with which he is filled, in regard to the tendency of society under the practical appli- cation of its principles. He has fixed his eyes, not on abstract principles, but on actual issues, and traced the result, not of theoretical views on the best regulations for society, but of such as have really been established, and had their tendency tested by the experience of centuries in difi'erent ages and countries of the world. He sees with dismay, in the state of society in modern Europe, under the combined influence of free trade, increasing knowledge, popular insti- tutions, vast wealth, and long-established civilisation, a mere repetition, under diff'erent Ucimes, of those dreadful social evils which corroded the Roman empire, and in the end overturned the vast physical dominion of the legions. He sees in that state of rural society which is nearly extinct in the British islands, and fast wearing out in France, Belgium, and other parts of Europe, where civilisation is most advanced, the only solid foundation for general happiness, the only durable bulwark of public morality, the only per- manent security for national existence. This state of society is disappearing, and a new condition of men coming on, from causes which seem beyond the power of human control, but the fatal eff*ect of which is as apparent as the sun at noonday. And thence the gloomy views with which he is inspired on the future prospects of Europe, and his profound hostility to the principles of political economy, from which he considers them as having mainly arisen. PoUtical economy, as a science, dates its origin, by the common consent of men, from the famous work " On the 232 siSMoxDi. Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations." But a greater authority than Adam Smith has told us, that " he that HASTEXETH TO BE PJCH SHALL XOT BE IXXOCEXT." Sismondi's doctrines on political economy are a commentary on these words, applied to the management of nations and the social concerns of man. It is in the fatal thirst for wealth, and the application of all the powers of knowledge, and all the resources of art, to that single object, that he sees the all-powerful cause, alike of the present degradation of so many of tlie working classes, of the false direction of political philosophy, and of the spread of social evils, which will, to all appearance, in the end proA^e fatal to the existence of the British empire, and of all the European communities. But it is not any general or vague declamation on the pro- gress of corruption, and the growing evils of society, which he has brought forward ; he has given a close and cogent chain of reasoning, supported by a formidable array of historical facts, and shown liow it is that the evils have arisen — how they bear upon the condition of the great bulk of the people, how they degrade their character, lower their habits, corrupt their morals, and destroy their happi- ness ; and how irremediable, under the prevailing ideas of the influential classes in society, these evils have become. The social injustice and political delusions which, history has now clearly ascertained, were the causes of the ruin of the Roman empire, he sees reappearing amidst us under different names, but in still more aggravated forms, and with more hopeless influences on society. All this he traces mainly to the ruinous pursuit of wealth, which has seized alike upon our pliilosophers, our statesmen, and our practi- cal men ; which has too fatally verified the saying of Scripture, that *'the love of money is the root of all evil ;" and converted the noble science of political economy, the end of which is "ut homines feliciter vivant," into the degrading handmaid of wealth. So strongly is he impressed with this idea, and so convinced of the ruinous direction which the social sciences are taking, under the combined influence of philosophic error and moneyed ambition, that he thinks it indispensable that language should mark the lasting and indelible crisis of distinction between the philosophy of general happiness and SISMONDI. 233 the means bj ^yllicll national wealth may be augmented. The first he calls " Economie Politique," or " Les Sciences Sociales ;" the last " Chrematistique,^^ or the art of accumu- lating riches in a state.'" It is in the conversion of political economy, or the science of making men happy, which of course can only be done by rendering them orderly, moral, and rehgious, into Chrematistique, or the mere pursuit of the means by which we may augment the sum of national riches, that the unobserved source of by far the greatest social evils of the present day is to be found. These evils are greater than either the slavery of the Romans or the bondage of serfs in modern times ; for they have induced the ruinous effects of both these degrading systems, without the alleviating and counteracting advantages with which either was attended. And the way in which this effect flows from the social doctrine of modern times is this : — An augmentation of production is generally considered as an addition to national wealth ; and it is on this ground that all nations, under the guidance of the Ghrematists, are making such strenuous efforts to increase their agricultural and manufactured produce. Such an augmentation, how- ever, says Sismondi, is not only by no means in every case an addition to national wealth, but it is often a useless and pernicious addition to national suffering. If the supply of any article exceeds what can be consumed in the early and simple ages of society, or disposed of to advantage in the later, it is not only no advantage, but a positive loss. What avails it that the yards of cotton cloth manufactured, or the quarters of wheat raised, are increased in a country from 50,000,000 to 100,000,000, if, in consequence of the increased supply, the price is lowered One-half? The pro- ducers get their trouble for their pains — they gain nothing — the consumers get more than they require — great part of the superfluity is wasted or sent abroad at a ruinous loss. Augmentation of production, therefore, is not in every case a sign of increased national wealth ; it is the maintenance of a due i^roportion between production and, consumption which is the real desideratum, and forms the only real basis of lasting national opulence. * From a:?'!,'**'— " mouev, riclics."' 234 SISMONDI. According to the Chrematists, the Trealth of a nation, as of an indiyidual producer, is to be measured by the excess of the value of production, or the price obtained for it, over its cost. This, says Sismondi, is the most fatal of all errors, and the grand source of the misery of the working classes, and instability of society, in all the manufacturing states of Europe. It is true the wealth of a master-manufacturer is to be measured by the excess of the price he obtains for his produce over the cost of its production ; but a master-manufacturer is not a nation. A nation consists not only of masters, but of workmen; not only of consumers, but of producers. The latter class is by far the most numerous, the most important, the most likely to increase. If they are reduced to misery in conse- quence of the reduction of their wages by the introduction of machinery, the employment of juvenile or female labour, the immigration of foreign labourers, or any other cause, it is a poor compensation to say, that the profits of their employers have been greatly augmented at their expense. If the excess of the value of production above its cost were either the measure, or even an important element in national wealth, Ireland, where the wages of field labour are sixpence a-day, and Poland, where they are threepence, should be the richest nations in the world, whereas they are notoriously the poorest. The real measure of national wealth is to be found, not in the excess of production above the consumption employed in it, but in the means of com- fortable livelihood which their industry affords to the tuhole classes of the community ; and that is only to be attained where wealth is very generally distributed. The mere increase of national wealth is far from being, in every instance, an addition either to national strength, national security, or national happiness. On the contrary, it is often the greatest possible diminution to the whole three. It is not the increase of wealth, but its distribution, which is the great thing to be desired. It is on this that the welfare and happiness of society depend. When wealth, whether in capital or revenue, runs into a few hands — when landed property accumulates in the persons of a knot of territorial magnates, and commerce centres in the warehouses of a Hmitcd number of merchant princes, and manufactures SISMONDI. 235 in tlie workshops of a small body of colossal companies or incliyidual master-employers, it is absolutely certain that the great bulk of the people ^yill be in a state of degrada- tion and distress. The reason is, that these huge fortunes hare been made by diminishing the cost of production — that is, the wages of labour — to such an extent, as to have enormously and unjustly increased the profits of the stock employed in conducting it. Society, in such circumstances, is in the unstable equilibrium : it rests on the colossal wealth, territorial or commercial, of a few; but it has no hold on the affections or interests of the great majority of the community. It is liable to be oyerturned by the first shock of adverse fortune. Any serious external disaster, any considerable internal suffering, may at once overturn the whole fabric of society, and expose the wealth of the magnates only as a tempting plunder to the cupidity and recklessness of the destitute classes of society. " There is as much true philosophy as poetry,'' says Sismondi, " in the well-known lines of Goldsmith, — * 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay ! Princes and lords may flourish or may fade — A breath may make them as a breath has made ; But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroy 'd, can never be supplied.' " The Ghrematists always represent an increase of national wealth as necessarily flowing from an augmentation of the riches of the individuals who compose it. But this is the greatest possible mistake. Great part of the riches obtained by individuals in a state, so far from being an addition to the national wealth, is an abstraction from it. The reason is, that it is made at the expense of others in the same community ; it is a transference of riches from one hand to another, not an addition to their total amount. Every one sees that the gains of the gamester, the opera-dancer, the lawyer, are of this description; what they take is taken from others in the same community. But the magnitude of the gains of merchants and manufacturers blinds the world to the real nature of their profits, which, in great part at least, are made at the expense of others in the state. If the importing merchant makes extravagant profits, he indeed is enriched; but how is he enriched? 23G SISMOKDI. In part, at least, lie is so, by impoyerisliing siicli of his countrymen as purchase his goods at the exorbitant price which constitute his profits. If the exporting merchant or manufacturer drives a gainful trade, it is in part, without doubt, derived from the industry of foreign nations to whom the export goods are sold; but it is too often earned at the expense also of the workmen he employs, who have been compelled by competition, or destitution, to sell their labour to him at a rate barely sufficient for the support of existence. We are not to flatter ourselves that the nation is becoming rich, because the exporters of Irish grain. Paisley shawls, or Manchester cotton goods, are making fortunes, when the labourers they employ are earning from sixpence to eightpence a-day only. On the contrary, the magnitude of the gains of the former is too often only a measure of the destitution and degradation of the latter. It is usually considered that it is a sufficient answer to this to observe, that if riches are thus, from the direction which national industry has taken, drawn to a distressing extent from one class of the community to concentrate them in another, a corresponding benefit is conferred upon other classes, by the increased expenditure which takes place on the part of those in whose hands the wealth has accumulated. There can be no doubt that a certain com- pensation does take place in this way ; and it is the exist- ence of that compensation which alone renders society tolerable under such circumstances. But the benefit accruing is no adequate set-off*, if society be viewed as a whole, to the evil incurred. If two millions of Irish labourers are working at sixpence a-day each, and two millions more of human beings, in the Emerald Isle, are in a state of desti- tution, it is a poor compensation for such a dreadful state of things to observe, that some hundred Irish noblemen, or absentee proprietors, are spending ten or twenty thou- sand a-year each amidst the luxuries of London, Paris, or Naples; and that they sometimes extract five or six guineas an acre from their starving tenants. If weavers in Renfrewshire, and cotton operatives in Lancashire, are making cotton cloths at eightpence a-day of wages, we are not to be deluded into the belief that society is prosperous. SISMOls^DI. 237 because everj three or four years six or eight cotton lords buy estates for a hundred thousand pounds a-piece ; and one half of the railways in the kingdom are constructed with the wealth of Manchester and Glasgow. There are no two things more different than national riches and the wealth of the rich of a nation. It is the fatal and ruinous effect of wealth, thus accumu- lated in the hands of a few, at the expense of the great bulk of the industrious classes in a state, that it tends to perpetuate and increase the diseased and perilous state of society from which it sprang. The common observations, that money makes money, and that poverty breeds poverty, show how universally the experience of mankind has felt that capital, in the long run, gives an overwhelming advan- tage in the race for riches to the rich, and that poverty as uniformly, ere long, gives the vast superiority in numbers to the poor. We often hear of an earl or a merchant prince mourning the want of an heir, but scarcely ever of a Highland couple or an Irish hovel wanting their overflowing brood of little half-naked savages. AVe occasionally hear of a poor man raising himself by talent and industry to fortune ; but in general he does so only by associating his skill with some existing capital, and giving its owner thus the extraordinary advantage of uniting old wealth with a new discovery. To get on in the world without capital is daily becoming more difficult to the great bulk of men : it is, in trade or commerce at least, wholly impossible. Thus, as wealth accumulates in the capital and great cities of the empire, destitution, poverty, and of course crime and immorality, multiply around the seats where that wealth was originally created. And this evil, so far from abating with the lapse of time, daily increases, and must increase till some dreadful convulsion takes place, and restores the subverted balance of society ; because the power of capital, like that of a lever which is continually lengthened, is daily augmenting in the centres of wealth; and the power of numbers in the centres of destitution is hourly on the increase, from the reckless and improvident habits which that destitution has engendered. The happiness of a nation, its morality, order, and security, are mainly, if not entirely, dependent on the extent to which 238 SISMONDI. property with its attendant blessings, and habits of reflection, regularity, and industry, are difliised among the people. But the doctrines of the Chrematists, and of nearly the whole school of modern political economists, go almost entirely to uproot this inestimable blessing. The principle being once fixed in men's minds, and acted upon by individual men and the legislature, that the great thing is to diminish the cost of production, it follows, as a very natural conse- quence, that the main thing is to diminish the lunges of the producers. Everything which can conduce to that object is vigorously pursued, without the slightest regard to the effect the changes must have on the fortunes, and ultimate fate in life, of whole classes in society. It is thus that, in agriculture, the engrossing of farms takes place — an evil so sorely felt in England during the seventeenth, and in Scotland in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries — and that hundreds and thousands of happy families are dispossessed from their hereditary possessions, to make room for that " devourer of the human race," as the old writers called it, the sheep. It is thus that, in our own times, the small tenants and cottars have been so generally dispossessed in Scotland and Ireland, to make room for the large cultivator or store farmer. It is thus that the race of hand-loom weavers, who carry on their trade in their own houses, and with the advantages of rural residence, gardens, fields, and country air, is everywhere becoming extinct, or their wages have fallen so low as barely to support existence in the very humblest rank of life. In the room of these sturdy old children of the soil, has sprung up a race of puny operatives or labourers, living by wages, and having no durable connexion either with the land, or even with the capitalist who employs them. Employed at weekly wages, they are constantly on the verge of famine if turned out of their employment. Everything now is concentrated in huge mills, manufacturing districts, and great towns, where the labour of men is too often supplanted by women, that of women by children, that of children almost entirely by machinery, on which they attend. The cost of production, indeed, is prodigiously diminished, by the sub- stitution of these feeble or tiny labourers for full-grown men; and with it the profits of the masters, and the circle of the export sale, are proportionally augmented. But at siSMONDi. 239 what expense is this profit to a few gained ? At the expense, in some degree at least, it is to be feared, of the independence, the comfort, tlie morals, the lives, of whole classes of the labouring portions of the community. The application of knowledge to the arts, of science to manufactures, so far from diminishing, has, hitherto at least, had the most ruinous possible effect in increasing this fatal tendency of great capital and extensive manufactured industry upon mankind. Watt, Arkwright, Crompton — those giants of intellectual power, whose discoveries have augmented tenfold, often a hundredfold, the productive powers of manufacturing labour — have been the worst enemies that the happiness and morals of the working manufacturers ever knew. For what is it that, by means of great capital, working with the powers which their immortal discoveries have conferred, manufacturing industry has become '? Why, it has all, or nearly all, run into huge mills, or other establishments, in w^hich machinery, at a cost of thirty, forty, or fifty thousand pounds, is erected, and a crowd of needy women and children are employed, in ordinary times at the lowest wages which can support existence, with a few men, at a guinea or twenty-five shillings a-week, to direct and superintend their labours. It need not be told what the habits of such a crowd of young women, most of them from fourteen to twenty, must in general be. These evils in manufacturing districts are universally felt and complained of; but it is not equally generally admitted, that they arise invariably, and, as matters at present stand, inevitably, from that very extension of science and mechanical power to the arts, which is, in the view of the increase of national wealth, so just a subject of exultation, and wliich it is so much the object, both of legislative enactment and of individual ingenuity, to augment and extend. Yet is not the crushino; effect of these great discoveries on the welfare of the labouring classes, as manifest as their elevating influence on the fortunes of their employers, and the sum total of the produce of national manufactured industry 1 On no other principle is it possible to explain the prodigious accumulation of wealth in one class of the British empire, and of degradation, misery, crime, and destitution in the other, and far more numerous classes. 240 SISMONDI. The division of labour and the confining of each workman, or workchild, to one limited sphere of employment, while it is productive of a very great increase in the skill which each exerts in his own department, and in consequence augments, in a similar proportion, the net produce of manufactured industry, is still more fatal to the morals, habits, and independence of the manufacturing classes. Variety of occupation is indispensable to vigour of mind or independence of character. The exclusive chaining of the human mind to one employment, even though that employment is of the most intellectual kind, as the duties of the lawyer, the statesman, the physician, or the divine, speedily contracts the understanding, narrows the interest, circumscribes the field of enjoyment, and often hardens the heart. If this is the case, as undoubtedly it is, with those who are exclusively immersed even in the learned professions, which require an exercise of thought, and can be founded only on a long and cultivated education, how much more must it be the case with those whose occupation is purely mechanical, and so trivial that it may be learned in a few days — as twirling a film, twisting a cotton, dabbing a plate, or drawing a cloth out of a vat '? Such operatives are exposed, at every period of their lives, to the greatest evils which can debase humanity — uncertainty of subsistence and monotony of occupation. Their work is so simple, that any one can learn it in a few days — therefore they are exposed to competition with the whole labouring classes of the community ; it is so uniform that it neither requires, nor is compatible with, intellectual elevation — therefore it is speedily made, by the effect of competition for such simple employment, to engross their whole time. Mental improvement, moral or religious cultivation, are scarcely possible to any but the strongest minds united to the strongest bodies, in the circumstances to which the working classes, under such a system, are speedily reduced. If any one doubts this, let him dig, or hoe, or walk along the road, or trundle a hoop, or bear a fowling-piece for twelve hours a-day without intermission, save at breakfast and dinner, and then see with what appetite he can take to moral or intellectual improvement when he comes in at night. It is the deplorable effect of such a state of things, that SISMONDI. 241 it tends not merely to perpetuate, but to increase, the very evils from which it has arisen, and reduce the ^Yo^kiDg classes to that state wherein extrication from them is next to impossible. Under the pressure of the ceaseless desire to cheapen production and diminish the cost of manufacture, young persons of both sexes are huddled together into mills and factories, at so early a period of life that they are scarcely fit to leave the nursery. It has recently been found necessary to introduce a special statute to prohibit children being employed in print-fields in England under eight years of age. They are so because they can at once earn sixpence or eightpence a-day by standing beside a wheel, or watching a film of cotton which is discharged out of a machine ; and this cheap and infantine labour is equally attractive to the parents, who thus discover in their offspring a source of income instead of a burden — and the manufacturer, who finds his work done by little docile labourers, too weak to engage in a strike, and yet able to do the work. No exertion of strength is required, at least none at any one moment, in many of these occupations — though the work, when long continued, is to the last degree exhausting ; the steam-engine lifts all the weights and furnishes all the power. Thus there is, from the necessities and interests of all concerned, a constant demand for juvenile labour ; and this demand speedily produces its own supply, by promoting early marriages, or fostering a swarm of bastards among persons thus thrown together, at the period of life when the passions are strongest, with a total separation at all times, save bed-time, from that only school of virtue, the parental home. jMoral and intellectual cultivation is, God be praised ! not rendered impossible in the more superior and industrious of the manufacturing operatives ; but it may be doubted whe- ther the species of literature which is in general presented to them, and unhappily proves most attractive, either strengthens their minds or improves their happiness. Exciting novels, such as those of Victor Hugo, Janin, Sue, and others of that class; highly-wrought pictures of the manners and vices of high life ; horrible stories of seduc- tion, murder, and suicide, such as compose so large a part of the modern romance school of France, — are most sure of circulation among the working classes of great towns, because VOL. III. Q 242 SISMONDI. they at once interest and excite the imagination. They are read to the extent, and for the reason, that novels are so generally devoured by the young, the imaginative, and the indolent of both sexes in the higher ranks. The poor ope- ratives, however, have an excuse for the exclusive reading of such exciting inanities, which does not belong to their higher fellow-citizens; they are so worn out by long-con- tinued toil, that they are unable to hear the fatigue of any kind of reading which requires application or reflection. Some, no doubt, are improved by works of a more elevated class, which they contrive to purchase out of their savings, and to devour during the brief period allowed them between labour and repose. But their number is very small in com- parison of the whole, as is decisively proved by the limited number of booksellers' shops in the manufacturing towns, compared to those which supply the means of sensual enjoy- ment. It is seldom in such cities you will find one book- seller's shop for a hundred where beer or spirits are retailed. Many even of those who read are rather injured than improved, both in their habits and their happiness, by the mental cultivation they receive. They contract exaggerated ideas of the enjoyment of riches, and the avenues to distinc- tion which may be opened by intellectual effort ; they become dissatisfied with the station in the world which Providence has assigned them ; they strive to exchange bodily for intel- lectual toil; and in the vain attempt to exchange their lot for a better one, numbers are precipitated into difficulties, crimes, and ruin. The social organisation of trades in all the European cities, during tlie Middle Ages, was eminently favourable to the working classes; and it was, perhaps, the greatest cala- mity that ever befell them that, in the madness of demo- cratic ambition, they united with the master employers to pull down these institutions. When each craft was orga- nised in a little repubhc of its own, with its office-bearers, stated meetiugs, funds for the indigent, and exclusive privi- leges, a gradation of ranks was created among the poor — a little aristocracy of industry, which often proved itself capable of contending with the proudest aristocracy of land or riches. The poor were not left alone ; the wrongs of individuals were taken up by their craft, joint measures for SISMONDI. 243 the common behoof were pursued, the dreadful feeling of isolation in the midst of a crowd was unknown ; all were enrolled under some banner, or entered with some craft. Thus every one felt himself in a fixed and definite place in society ; he had privileges and advantages of a tangible kind to forfeit by losing it. But when exclusive privileges, crafts, and incorporations were abolished, amidst cries of joy and shouts of triumph from the whole popular party all over the world, these inestimable blessings were lost. The poor became a mixed indiscriminate multitude, having no more coherence or power of resistance than a rope of sand. They degenerated into a huge assembly of private soldiers without oflScers, incapable either of organising anything for their own durable benefit, or of resisting the progressive encroachments of capital, machinery, and competition on the sole domain left them — the wages of their labour. Universally it has been found, that upon the abolition of incorporations and crafts, the condition of the working classes has rapidly and fearfully changed for the worse. The prin- ciple of free competition, of breaking down all barriers, allowing every one to elbow his neighbour out of employ- ment, and bringing everything down to the lowest and cheapest level, has tended only to lower the wages of labour and aggravate the insecurity of the poor. No one has a fixed or permanent station, everything is done for days' or weeks' wages; and the penalty of dismissal is destitution, famine, and a lingering death. Hence the constant com- plaint now on the part of the poor that they cannot get work, and the prodigious multitude of the lowest class who are constantly moving about, seeking in one situation that employment which they have lost in another. This, however, is of all things the most fatal to their habits, character, and prospects : they get among people to whom they are total strangers, who regard them with aversion as intruders, and are neither inclined to relieve their distresses nor to facili- tate their advance in the world. The most powerful check, next to religion, on human conduct — the opinion of friends — is lost on the very class who stand most in need of its con- trol. Obscurity screens immorality from detection, numbers shelter crime from punishment. The temptations to vice multiply, while the barriers against it are cut away. The 244 SISMONDI. reallj good poor are invariably stationary; moving about is as fatal to their habits as it is to those of children. The free circulation of labour, of which we hear so much from master employers and the Chrematists, is often an advan- tage with a view to the creation of wealth, or the sudden completion of great undertakings: considered with reference to national morals, happiness, and ultimate safety, it is one of the greatest curses which can befall a people. It is a sense of the evils arising from this feeling of isola- tion amidst multitudes, and the experienced inability of the poor, all struggling against each other for subsistence, to resist the progressive decline of their wages till they reach the lowest point consistent with the support of existence, which has made the working classes in France and England of late years so generally embrace, and make such incredible efforts to support, trades-unions. They have endeavoured, in so doing, to regain that organisation of crafts in separate classes and bodies, which was overturned amidst the shouts of triumph consequent on the French Revolution. But this attempt, so far from palliating the existing evils, has had the greatest possible tendency to aggravate them; for it has too often vested irresponsible power in hands wholly unfit to wield it. Perhaps the greatest, the most wide- spread, the most acute suffering endured by the labouring poor in Great Britain, during the last thirty years, has arisen from strikes. Nothing has tended so strongly to shake society to its centre, to array the working classes against their employers, to spread habits of recklessness, violence, and improvidence among them, and alienate their natural supporters from them by the frightful crimes to which they have given rise. Foresight, industry, regularity of conduct, frugality, saving habits — those prime guardians of humble virtue — are out of the question when men are subjected to the tyranny of these dreadful, popularly elected despots. The last and only possession left to the poor, their own labour, is liable to be reft from them by the imperious com- mands of an unknow^n and irresponsible committee, which, elevated to importance by the public distress, uses every means to prolong it, by preventing a return to habits of regular industry. The suffering produced by the compul- sory cessation from labour which these committees command. SISMONDI. 245 often for an incredibly long period, never could be borne but by men inflamed bj the spirit of party, and contending for what they ignorantly deem their best interests. It equals all that we read of in heroic besieged towns, enduring the extremities of famine before they submit to the besiegers. The Committee of Public Salvation was often shaken by a scarcity of provisions in the capital, and never failed to tremble at the forests of pikes which, when want became severe, issued from the Faubourg St Antoine ; but a trades- union committee succeeds in compelling men, by threats of the torch and the dagger, to remain in idleness for months together, and surrender their birthright and inheritance, the support of themselves, the food of their children, to the commands of an unknown power, which retains them in the agonies of want till suffering nature can no longer endure. The actual suffering resulting from this unparalleled tyranny, while it continues, is the least of its evils. A far greater, because more durable and irremediable calamity, is to be found in the demoralising of the poor, by depriving them of occupation, and dividing society, by arraying whole classes against each other. Industry, during the feudal ages, was often exposed to the most ruthless violence from the hand of power, and men possessed scarcely any security against the occasional oppres- sion of arbitrary monarchs, or the savage devastation of martial incursions. But great as these political evils were, it may be doubted whether they occasioned, in the long run, so serious an invasion on human happiness, and the springs of human virtue, as the social evils which, on the cessation of these political disorders, have, unobserved, insinuated themselves through society. The annals of the Middle Ages are filled with the most heart-rending accounts of the out- breaks of savage violence to which the people were subjected ; and it appeared impossible that society could ever have recovered the dreadful devastation to which it was frequently exposed. Yet it invariably did recover, and that, too, in an incredibly short space of time. The Crusades were the overflow of the full nations of Europe, after two centuries of that apparently withering hostility. We read of no such resurrection of national strength in Rome under the emperors after the devastations of the barbarians began ; nor 246 SISMONDI. do we hear of any such after the oppression of the pashas and agas in Turkey and Persia at this time. Superficial writers exphain this by saying, that these nations are in their dechne, and the Gothic nations, during the feudal ages, were in their youth. But the human race is, in all ages, equally young ; there is an equal number of young men in proportion to the population in every country and in every age. The reason of the difference is, that social evils have arisen in the one case which were unknown in the other : they have spread and diffused their baneful influence. The feudal institutions, amidst all their want of protec- tion against political violence or external oppression, had one admirable quality, which enabled society to bear up and advance under all these accumulated evils. They conferred power and influence at home on those only who were interested in the welfare of the people. The feudal baron at the head of his armed followers, was doubtless always ready, at the summons of his sovereign, to perform his fifty days' military service, or, at the call of an injured clansman, to make an inroad into the territories of a neighbouring but hostile feudatory. But when he did so, he had nothing to depend upon but his own retainers, serfs, or followers. If they were depressed, starving, alienated, or lukewarm, he was lost ; he was defeated in the field, and speedily besieged in his last stronghold. Thus, the most valuable element was universally diffused over society — viz., a sense of mutual dependence, and of the benefit each derived from the pros- perity of his neighbours. If the baron was weak or unsup- ported, his vassals were liable to be plundered, his serfs found themselves without bread. If the vassals were oppressed, the baron was undone : instead of a formidable array of stout men-at-arms, sturdy archers, and gallant spearmen to defend his domains, he found himself followed only by a weak and feeble array, giving awful evidence, in the decisive moment, of the ruinous effects of his disorderly or tyrannical government. Even the serfs were bound up with the prosperity of the Httle community. If they were weakened by bad usage, or driven from the domain by cruelty, the fields were untilled, the swine unherded, the baron and vassals without bread. Thus it was the interest of all to stand by, protect, and spare each other. Each felt SISMONDI. 247 the consequences of the neglect of these social duties, in immediate and often irreparable injury to himself It was this experienced necessity of mutual forbearance and support which was the mainspring of social improvement during the feudal ages, and enabled society so quickly to repair the chasm produced by the dreadful political evils to which it was occasionally exposed. Its spring of improvement and happiness was within — its evils were without. We often read, in the annals of those times, of the unbounded plunder and devastation exercised by armed violence upon pacific industry, and the great fortunes sometimes amassed by the robber chivalry, by such predatory incursions. That is the most decisive proof of the presence of political, and the absence of social evils. The people must have been pre- viously protected and prosperous, or they could not have been worth plundering. The annals of these times will transmit no account of fortunes made by pillaging or taxing the cottars of Ireland, the weavers of Paisley, or the cotton- piecers of iNIanchester. What rendered the feudal system in the end insupport- able, was the change of manners, strengthening of government, and cessation of private wars, which left its evils, and took away its blessings. When the baron lived in rude plenty on his estate, surrounded by his followers, respected by his vassals, feared by his neighbours, his presence was a benefit, his protection a blessing. But when the central government had acquired such strength as to have stopped private war- fare ; when standing armies had come to supersede the tumultuary feudal array, and the thirst for luxury or office had attracted the nobles to the capital, these blessings were at an end. The advantages of the feudal system had ceased with the removal of the evils it went so far to alleviate ; its burdens and restrictions remained, and were felt as an insup- portable restraint, without any corresponding benefit, on the rising industry of the people. The seigneur no longer was seen either at the chateau or in the village. In his stead the bailiff" made half-yearly visits to exact the rent or feudal services from vassals, whose prosperity had ceased to be any object either of interest or solicitude to their lord. Whether they were rich or poor, happy or miserable, contented or repining, was immaterial to him after he had ceased to reside 248 SISMONDI. in his castle, aud to be protected by his armed vassals. The one thing needful was to pay their rents, or perform their services, to maintain his extravagances ; and these were accordingly exacted with merciless severity. Thence the general oppression of the poor, and universal outcry against the system, which produced the French Revolution. The powerful central government, regular taxation, and large standing armies of modern Europe, have removed the chief political evils which were at times felt with such dread- ful severity during the Middle Ages ; but have there not been introduced social evils of a still more pernicious and irretriev- able character '? Private wars have disappeared ; we no longer hear of chateaux burnt, fields ravaged, or serfs massacred, in pursuance of the deadly feuds of hostile barons. War has become a separate profession ; military service is no longer required from the rural tenants ; the undivided attention of industry is permitted to be directed to pacific pursuits. The ravages of hostility, and the destruction of conquest, have been diminished in amount, and greatly alleviated in severity. Taxes levied on the whole community have superseded the necessity, save in extreme cases, of ruinous exactions from individuals; war is often felt rather as a stimulus to industry by its expenditure, than a blight to it from its contributions. It is the influence of these circumstances, joined to the pro- tection of a regular government and the unbounded stimulus of general freedom, which have given so marvellous an impulse to the prosperity of modern Europe, and rendered the British Empire in particular, where their fostering tendency has been most strongly felt, the admiration, the terror, and the envy of the world. But in lieu of the political oppression and military exac- tions which, in former days, were felt as so disastrous, a host of social evils have sprung up, and are rapidly spread- ing their baneful influence through every class of society, to such an extent as to render it doubtful whether their effect will not ultimately be to uproot society, and destroy the whole states of modern Europe. These effects have taken place amidst general peace and apparent general prosperity ; at a time when wealth was accumulating with unheard-of rapidity, and knowledge was diffused to an unprecedented extent. Law was regularly administered ; illegal acts gene- SISMONDI. 249 rally checked ; foreign hostility averted ; domestic oppression removed or softened. The Chrematists were in exultation; production was every day becoming cheaper ; exports and imports in consequence increasing ; and all the external symptoms of the highest prosperity, according to the doctrine of the wealth of nations, in the most flourishing state. But all these blessings have been neutralised, and a large portion of the community precipitated into the most woful degradation, by the operation of the very causes which have produced this vast increase of wealth, and its astonishing accumulation in the hands of a part of the commercial com- munity. The incessant efforts to lessen the cost of produc- tion have beat down the wages of labour in many departments to the lowest point ; the strenuous exertions made to facili- tate cheaper importation have reduced the remuneration of domestic industry to the lowest point consistent with its existence. Incredible have been the efforts made by all classes to counterbalance by additional industry this disastrous progress ; but the ouly effect of these efforts has been to augment the evil complained of, by increasing the necessity for exertion, and augmenting the mass of production with which society is flooded. Production in every line has come, in ordinary times, to outstrip consumption. Machinery has quadrupled its power ; gorged markets are constantly complained of as depriving industry of its just reward, and often of any at all. Society has become a great gambling- house, in which colossal fortunes are made by a few, and the great majority are turned adrift penniless, friendless, to destitution, ruin, or suicide. The condition of a consider- able portion of the working-classes has, in this terrible strife, generally been wofully changed for the worse. Brief periods of high prices, which induce habits of extravagance among them, are succeeded by long seasons of distress, which spread the reality of woe. In the desperate effort made to extend the foreign market, by cheapening production, nearly all the kindly relations of life have been snapped asunder. The operative is unknown to the master-employer ; he is turned off at a moment's warning into a cold world, in which he can find no other employment. The tenant is too often a stranger to the landlord ; or, at least, strangers are constantly brought on the land. The labourer, even, is in many cases 250 SISMONDI. unknown to the farmer ; his place can always be supplied bj a stranger, ready, probably, to work for less wages, because in greater distress. Everything is put up to auction, and sold to the highest bidder. Labour only is awarded to the lowest. A nation which has surrendered its government to the commercial classes, and at the same time has a large popu- lation and considerable territorial possessions, cannot fail to incur ruin if their rule is long continued. The reason is, that their interest is adverse to that of the most numerous, important, and valuable classes of society ; and they never cease to prosecute that interest till they have destroyed them. To import largely is for their interest; therefore, they promote all measures tending to favour the introduction of foreign productions, though their effect must be to depress, and in the end extinguish, native industry. They would have the people pay for these imports by enlarged exports ; in other words, they would convert society into^ a mere appendage of the trading classes. To enlarge these exports, they make the most strenuous effort in every possible way to cheapen production — that is, to lower the wages of labour. Their idea of a perfect society is one in which the labouring classes are reduced to the rank of mere attendants on machines, because that is the cheapest form of production. They would have them attend on these machines at six- pence or ninepence a-day, live chiefly on potatoes, and eat no bread but what is imported in foreign vessels, and from foreign countries, because they are cheaper than their own. In this way both exports and imports would be elevated to the highest pitch ; for the main part of the national food would figure in the imports, and the main part of national labour in the exports. Mercantile business would come to supersede every other — it alone would be attended with any profit. iNIeanwhile, domestic industry would languish and decline — the home market would be destroyed — the rural population, the mainstay of a nation, gradually withered away and wasted. Poverty and misery would weaken and ahenate the working classes ; and, amidst a constant increase of exports and imports, and growth of commercial wealtli, the nation would be destroyed. This is no imaginary picture. The ruin of the Roman SISMONDI. 251 empire in ancient, the desolation of the Campagna of Rome in modern times, are permanent proofs of its reality. It is generally said that slavery was the devouring cancer which destroyed the Roman Empire, and thence it is con- cluded by the Chrematists that, as we have no slaves, we can never be ruined like them. They forget that the reality of slavery may exist, and its evils remain, although its name has been expunged from the statute book. It is always to be recollected that slavery existed to just as great an extent in the most flourishing as in the decaying periods of the Roman dominion — in the days of Scipio and Caesar, as in those of Constantino or Honorius. Cato was a great dealer in slaves. He was especially careful to sell his slaves when they became old, lest, when worn out, they should become chargeable. The republic was brought to the brink of ruin a hundred years before the birth of Christ by the Servile War ; yet, with that devouring cancer in its intestines, it afterwards conquered the world. It was not slavery, but the combination of slavery with free trade and vast patrician and commercial wealth, which really brought ruin on the ancient world. " Verumque confitentibus," says Pliny, " laiifiindia perdidere Italiam : imo et provincias.^" It was the accumulation of patrician revenue and commercial wealth in the capital, when the provinces were cultivated only by slaves, and the gradual extinction of Italian agriculture by the introduction of Egyptian and Libyan grain — where it could be raised cheaper than in the Italian fields, because money was less plentiful in the impoverished extremities than in the gorged centre of the Empire, — which was the real cause of its ruin. The free race of Italian cultivators, the strength of the legions, disappeared before the fleets which wafted cheap grain from the banks of the Nile and the shores of Africa to the Tiber. Thence the impoverish- ing of the small freeholders — the buying up of all small freeholds by the great families — the extinction of grain culture in Italy — the managing of the huge estates into which the country was parcelled, in pasture cultivation, by means of slaves — the disappearance of Itahan free husband- men — and the ruin of the Empire. So rich was the capital when it fell, that Olympiodorus has recorded that, when Alaric appeared before Rome, it contained within its walls 252 SISMONDI. seyenteeii liimdred and fifty great families, many of whom had estates, almost entirely in pasturage, which yielded them one hundred and sixty thousand pounds sterling of yearly rent, or above £300,000 a-year of our money. To the same cause is to be ascribed the continued desola- tion of the Campagna of Rome in modern times. Slavery has disappeared ; but the curse of an unlimited and extra- ordinary supply of foreign grain to the Tiber still continues, and chains the proprietors of the A(/ro Romano to pastur- age as the only means of profitable cultivation. Travellers are never weary of expressing their astonishment at the desolation which comes up to the very gates of Rome, as of Constantinople ; but a very simple cause explains it in both. It is more profitable to keep the land in pasturage than to lay it out in grain cultivation, by reason of the deluge of foreign grain raised in semi-barbarous countries, with which the capital is flooded. From official documents laid before the Papal Government, which made the most anxious and minute inquiries into this subject, it appears that 8000 crowns laid out in agriculture in the Campagna of Rome, at the prices of Rome, would bring in a profit of only 30 crowns a-year ; while the same sum laid out in pasturage of sheep, on the same land, would bring in 1972 crowns. It is not surprising, in these circumstances, that the Campagna remains in grass.'" The cause of this extraordinary state of things is to be found, not in any pecuhar adaptation of the Campagna to grass cultivation ; for the land is, generally, of the most extraordinary fertility, and in former times, in the infancy of Rome, literally speaking " every rood had its man." The cause, and the sole cause, is to be found in the constant low price of grain in the capital, and the purchase of the luliole of its supply from foreign states. The Papal Government inherited from its Imperial predecessor the habit, and the necessity, of making periodical distributions of grain, at a cheap rate, to the people. The people inherited, from the lazy successors of the conquerors of the world, the habit of looking to the public stores for cheap distributions of food, as those of Paris did during the Revolution. Government, elective, weak, without any armed force, and in the hands of * NicoLAi, dcU Af/ro Romano, iii. 1C7-171. Sismoxdi's Etudes Socicdes, ii. 46. SISMONDl. 253 priests, had not courage to incur the present hazard conse- quent on a departure from this ruinous system ; and they bought their grain, of course, where thej could get it cheapest — in Egypt, Odessa, and the Levant. The banks of the Volga are to modern, what those of the Nile were to ancient Rome. The Campagna has been chained to sterility and desolation by the same cause in modern as in ancient times — under the Popes as the Emperors. So far has this evil gone, that in 1797, when the Papal Government was overturned by the French, the Casa Annonaria of the Apostolic Chamber, or Board of Public Subsistence, exhi- bited a deficit of 3,293,000 crowns, (£645,000,) incurred in retailing bread to the people cheaper than they could purchase it even in the cheapest foreign markets.""* The Campagna of Rome is the great type of the state to which the doctrine of the Chrematists would reduce the states of modern Europe. Agriculture, ruined by the per- petual curse of foreign importation ; urban industry alone flourishing by the stimulus of foreign export ; vast fortunes accumulated in the hands of a few merchants and great pro- prietors ; constant distress among the labouring poor ; all the symptoms of prosperity in the cities — all the marks of decay in the country : luxury the most unbounded, side by side with penury the most pinching ; an overflow of wealth which cannot find employment, in one class of society ; a mass of destitution that seeks in vain for work, in another ; a middle class daily diminishing in number and dechning in importance, between the two extremes ; and government, under the influence of popular institutions, yielding to all the demands of the opulent class, because it gives money — and deaf to all the cries of the impoverished, because they can only ask for bread. The name of slavery is indeed abolished in Western Europe, but is its reality, are its evils, not present \ Have we not retained its fetters, its restraints, its degradations, without its obligation to support '? Are not the English factory children often practically in a worse servitude than in the Eastern harem ? If the men are not " ascripti glebae," are they not " ascripti molinis ac carhonariis f What * NicoLAT, delV Agro Romano, iii. 153. SiSMONDi's Etudes Sociales, ii, 44. This part of Sismondi's work, which will be found vol. ii. pp. 1-74, is highly interest- ing. 254 SISMONDI. trade can a factory girl or coal-mine child take to, if thrown out of employment 1 The master cannot flog them, or bring them back by force to his workshop. Mighty diflfer- ence ! He can starve them if they leave it : he chains them to their mills by the invincible bond of necessity. They have the evils of slavery without its advantages. Can, or ought, such a state of things long continue '? Whether this is descriptive of the state of society in France and England, let those determine who are familiar with the people of either of tliese countries. Such are Sismondi's political views, which are enforced in the volumes before us by a vast array of historical and statistical facts, which, as well as the deservedly acknow- ledged talent and character of the writer, entitle them to the highest respect, and render them of the deepest interest. That they are " important if true," as the Americans say, no one will deny : that they are of immediate and pressing application to the state of society in the British islands, none acquainted with it, especially m the manufacturing districts, will be so bold as to dispute. We have deemed it best to give an abstract of his opinions and principles in a con- densed form, in preference to quoting individual passages, because he expands his ideas so much, that the latter course would have enabled us to give only a limited number of his views. Those who will take the trouble to turn to the original volumes, will find every sentence in the preceding abstract enforced and illustrated at least a dozen times in this most able and original work. That we consider his ideas as in the main just, and his anticipations too likely to prove well founded, may be inferred from the pains we have taken to form a digest of them in the preceding pages. W^e only hope that, though he possibly has not much exaggerated the social evils which now threaten society, he has not given their due weight to the many alleviating or corrective causes which, in a free, religious, and moral community, are con- stantly called into activity when society has come to require their operation. Sismondi says, though he has been enforcing these principles for twenty years, he lias found few converts to his opinion in France ; and tliat he does not think he would have found one, if the English Parliamentary Reports had not afforded decisive evidence of the existence of many SISMONDI. 255 of these social evils, amidst unbounded commercial prosperity and the highest political power in Great Britain. The social evils which destroyed Rome, he reminds us, were in full activity during the eighty years of the splendid, pacific, and wise rule of the Antonines — the most happy, to external appearance, which the world ever knew. Their baneful influence appeared at once, when pohtical dangers com- menced with the accession of Commodus. These doctrines are not the less likely to be true that they are contrary to general opinion, that they run counter to many important interests, that they are incapable of present application, that they are adverse to the policy of the rulers of the state. Government rules men, but Providence rules government, and will in the end assert its supremacy, and right the moral evils of mankind, or punish the sins of nations. POLAND [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, August 1831] Poland in ancient possessed very much the extent and dominion of Russia in Europe in modern times. It stretched from the Baltic to the Euxine ; from Smolensko to Bohemia ; and embraced within its bosom the whole Scjthia of antiquity — the storehouse of nations, from whence the hordes issued who so long pressed upon and at last overthrew the Roman empire. Its inhabitants have in every age been celebrated for their heroic valour : they twice captured the ancient capital of Russia, and the conflagration of Moscow and retreat of Napoleon were but the repetition of what had resulted five centuries before from the appearance of the Polish eagles aiding the Tartar horse on the banks of the Moskwa. Placed on the frontiers of European civilisation, they long formed its barrier against barbarian invasion : and the most desperate wars they ever maintained were those which they had to carry on with their own subjects, the Cossacks of the Ukraine, whose roving habits and predatory life disdained the restraints of regular government. When we read the accounts of the terrible struggles they maintained with the great insurrection of these formidable hordes under Bogdan, in the seventeenth century, we are transported to the days of Scythian warfare, and recognise the features of that dreadful invasion of the Sarmatian tribes, which the genius of Marius averted from the Roman republic. Nor has the military spirit of the people declined in modern times. The victories of Sobieski, the deliverance of Vienna, seem rather the fiction of romance than the records of real achievement. No victorv so dorious as that of POLAND. 257 Kotziin liad been gained bj Christendom over the Saracens since the triumphs of Richard on the field of Ascalon : and the tide of Mahommedan conquest would have rolled resistlesslj over the plains of Germany, even in the reign of Louis XIV., if it had not been arrested by the Polish hero under the walls of Vienna. Napoleon said it was the peculiar quality of the Polanders to form soldiers more rapidly than any other people. And their exploits in the Italian and Spanish campaigns justified the high eulogium and avowed partiality of that great commander. No swords cut deeper than theirs into the Russian ranks during the campaign of 1812, and alone, amidst universal defec- tion, they maintained their faith inviolate after the rout of Leipsic. But for the hesitation of the French emperor in restoring their independence, the whole strength of the kingdom would have been roused on the invasion of Russia ; and had this been done, had the Polish monarchy formed the support of French ambition, the history of the world might have been changed ; " From Fate's dark book one leaf been torn, And Flodden had been Bannockburn." How, then, has it happened that a country of such immense extent, inhabited by so martial a people, whose strength on great occasions was equal to such achievements, should in every age have been so unfortunate, that their victories should have led to no result, and their valour so often proved inadequate to save their country from dis- memberment. The plaintive motto, Quomodo lapsus ! Quid feci f — may with still more justice be applied to the fortunes of Poland than the fall of the Courtenays. "Always combating," says Salvandy, "frequently victorious, they never gained an accession of territory, and were generally glad to terminate a glorious contest by a cession of the ancient pro- vinces of the republic." Superficial observers will answer, that it was the elective form of government ; their unfortunate situation in the midst of military powers, and the absence of any chain of moun- tains to form the refuge of unfortunate patriotism. But a closer examination will demonstrate that these causes were not sufiicient to explain the phenomenon ; and that the series of disasters which have so long overwhelmed the YOL. III. R 258 POLAXD. monarchy, Imye arisen from a more permanent and lasting cause than either their physical situation or their elective gorernment. The Polish cro^yn has not always been elective. For two hundred and twenty years they were governed by the race of the Jagellons with as much regularity as England by the Plantagenets ; and yet, during that dynasty, the losses of the republic were fully as great as in the subsequent periods. Prussia is as flat, and incomparably more sterile, than Poland, and, with not a third of the territory, it is equally exposed to the ambition of its neighbours : yet Prussia, so far from being the subject of partition, has steadily increased in territory and population. The fields of Poland, as rich and fertile as those of Flanders, seem the prey of every invader, while the patriotism of the Flemings has studded their plains with defensive fortresses which have secured their independence, notwithstanding the vicinity of the most ambitious and powerful monarchy in Europe. The real cause of the never-ending disasters of Poland is to be found in the democratic equality which, from the remotest ages, has prevailed in the country. The elective form of govern- ment was the consequence of this principle in their consti- tution, which has descended to them from Scythian freedom, and has entailed upon the state disasters worse than the whirlwind of Scythian invasion. " It is a mistake," says Salvandy, " to suppose that the representative form of government was found in the woods of Germany. What was found in the woods was Polish equality, which has descended unimpaired in all the parts of that vast monarchy to the present times. ''' It was not to our Scythian ancestors, but the early councils of the Christian church, that we are indebted for the first example of representative assemblies." In these words of great and philosophic importance is to be found the real origin of the disasters of Poland. The principle of government, from the earliest times in Poland, was, that every freeman had an equal right to the administration of public affairs, and that he was entitled to exercise this right, not by representation, but in person. The result of this was, that the whole freemen of tlie country * Salvandy, vol. i. Tableau Historlque. POLAND. 259 constituted the real government ; and the diets were attended bj 100,000 horsemen, the great majority of whom were, of com'se, ignorant and in necessitous circumstances, while all were penetrated with an equal sense of their importance as members of the Polish state. The convocation of these tumultuous assemblies was almost invariably the signal for murder and disorder. Thirty or forty thousand lackeys, in the service of the nobles, but still possessing the rights of freemen, followed their masters to the place of meeting, and were ever ready to support their ambition by military violence ; while the unfortunate natives, eaten up by such an enormous assemblage of armed men, regarded the meeting of the citizens in the same light as the inhabitants of the Grecian city did the invasion of Xerxes, when they returned tiianks to the gods that he had not dined in their neigh- bourhood, or every living creature would have perished. So far did the Poles carry this equality among all the free citizens, that by an original and fundamental law, called the Liherum Veto, any one member of the diet, by simply interposing his negative, could stop the election of the sovereign, or any other measure the most essential to the public welfare. Of course, in so immense a multitude, some are always to be found factious or venal enough to exercise this dangerous power, either from individual perversity, the influence of external corruption, or internal ambition ; and hence the numerous occasions on which diets, assembled for the most important purposes, were broken up without having come to any determination, and the Republic left a prey to anarchy, at the time when it stood most in need of the unanimous support of its members. It is a striking proof how easily men are deluded by tlie phantom of general equality, when it is recollected that this ruinous privilege has not only, in every age, been clung to as the Magna Charta of Poland, but that the native historians, recounting distant events, speak of any infringement upon it as the most fatal measure to the liberties and welfare of the country. All human institutions, however, must be subject to some check, which renders it practicable to get through business on urgent occasions, in spite of individual opposition. The Poles held it utterly at variance with every principle of freedom to bind any freeman by a law to which he had not 260 POLAND. consented. The principle, that the majority could bind the minority, seemed to them inconsistent with the most elementary ideas of liberty. To get quit of the difficulty, they commonly massacred the recusant ; and this appeared, in their eyes, a much less serious violation of freedom than out-voting him ; because, said they, instances of violence are few, and do not go beyond the individual sufferers ; but when once the rulers establish that the majority can compel the minority to yield, no man has any security against the violation of his freedom. Extremes meet. It is curious to observe how exactly the violation of freedom by popular folly coincides, in its effect, with its extinction by despotic power. The bowstring in the Seraglio, and assassination at St Petersburg, are the limitations on arbitrary power in these despotic states. Popular murders were the means of restraining the exorbitant liberty of the Poles within the limits necessary for the maintenance of the forms even of regular government. Strange, as Salvandy has well observed, that the nation the most jealous of its liberty should, at the same time, adhere to a custom of all others the most destructive to freedom ; and that, to avoid the government of one, they should submit to the despotism of all ! It is this original and fatal passion for equality which has in every age proved fatal to Polish independence — which has paralysed all the valour of her people, and all the enthusiasm of her character — and rendered the most warlike nation in Europe the most unfortunate. The measures of its government partook of the unstable and vacillating character of all popular assemblages. Bursts of patriotism were succeeded by periods of dejection ; and the endless changes in the objects of popular inclination, rendered it impracticable to pursue any steady object, or adhere, through all the varieties of fortune, to one uniform system for the good of the state. Their wars exactly resembled the contests in la Vendee, where, a week after the most glorious successes, the victorious army was dissolved, and the leaders wandering with a few followers in the woods. At the battle of Kotzim, Sobieski commanded 40,000 men, the most regular army which for centuries Poland had sent into the field ; at their head, he stormed the Turkish intrenchments, though defended POLAND. 261 by 80,000 veterans and 300 pieces of cannon; he routed that mighty host, slew 50,000 men, and carried the Polish ensigns in triumph to the banks of the Danube. But while Europe resounded with his praises, and expected the deliverance of the Greek empire from his exertions, his army dissolved ; the troops returned to their homes ; and the invincible conqueror was barely able to keep the field with a few thousand men. Placed on the frontiers of Europe and Asia, the Polish character and history have partaken largely of the effects of the institutions of both these quarters of the globe. Their passion for equality, their spirit of freedom, their national assemblages, unite them to European independeuce ; their unstable fortune, perpetual vacillation, and chequered annals, partake of the character of Asiatic adventure. While the states by whom they are surrounded have shared in the steady progress of European civilisation, the Polish monarchy has been distinguished by the extraordiuary vicis- situdes of Eastern story. Elevated to the clouds during periods of heroic adventure, it has sunk to nothing upon the death of a single chief; the republic which had recently carried its arms in triumph to the neighbouring capitals, was soon struggling for its existence with a contemptible enemy; and the bulwark of Christendom in one age was, in the next, razed from the book of nations. Would we discover the cause of this vacillation, of which the deplorable consequences are now so strongly exempli- fied, we shall find it in the passion for equality which appears in every stage of their history, and of which M. Salvandy, a Liberal historian, has given a powerful picture : — "The proscription of their greatest princes," says he, "and, after their death, the calumnies of posterity, faithfully echoing the follies of contem- poraries, have destroyed all those who, in different ages, have endeavoured in Poland to create a solid or protecting power. Nothing is more extra- ordinary than to hear the modern annalists of that unfortunate people, whatever their country or doctrine may be, mechanically repeat all the national outcry against what they call their despotic tyrants. Facts speak in vain against such prejudices. In the eyes of the Poles, nothing was worthy of preservation in their country but liberty and equality^ — a high- sounding expression, which the French Revolution had not the glory of inventing, nor its authors the wisdom to apply more judiciously. " Contrary to what has occurred everywhere else in the world, the Poles have never been at rest but under the rule of feeble monarchs. Great and vigorous kings were uniformly the first to perish ; they have always sunk 262 POLAND. under vain attempts to accustom an independent nobility to the restraints of authority, or soften to their slaves the yoke of bondage. Thus the royal authority, which elsewhere expanded on the ruins of the feudal system, has in Poland only become Aveaker with the progi'ess of time. All the eflorts of its monarchs to enlarg^e their prerogatiA'e have been shattered against a compact, independent, courageous body of freemen, who, in resist- ing such attempts, have never either been weakened by division, nor inti- midated by menace. In their passion for equality, in their jealous inde- pendence, they were unwilling even to admit any distinction between each other ; they long and haughtily rejected the titles of honour of foreign states, and, even till the last age, refused to recognise those hereditary dis- tinctions and oppressive privileges which are now so fast disappearing from the face of society. They even went so far as to insist that one, in matters of deliberation, should be equal to all. The crown was thus constantly at war with a democracy of nobles. The dynasty of the Piasts strove, with much ability, to create in the midst of that democracy a few leading families, by the side of those nobles a body of burghers. These things, difficult in all states, were there impossible. A hereditary dynasty, always stormy and often interrupted, was unfit for the persevering efforts requisite for such a revolution. In other states the monarchs pursued a uniform policy, and their subjects were vacillating ; there, the people were steady, and the crown changeable." — Vol. i. 71. " In other states, time had everywhere established the hereditary descent of honours and power. Hereditary succession was established from the throne to the smallest fief, from the reciprocal necessity of subduing the vanquished people, and securing to each his share in the conquests. In Poland, on the other hand, the waywodes or warlike chieftains, the magis- trates and civil authorities, the governors of castles and provinces, so far from founding an aristocracy by establishing the descent of theii* honours or offices in their families, were seldom even nominated by the king. Their authority, especially that of the Palatins, excited equal umbrage in the sovereign who should have ruled, as the nobles who should have obeyed them. There was thus authority and order nowhere in the state. " It is not surprising that such men should unite to the pride which could bear nothing above, the tyranny which could spare nothing below them. In the dread of being compelled to share their power with their inferiors elevated by riches or intelligence, they affixed a stigma on every useful profession as a mark of servitude. Their maxim was, that nobility of blood was not lost by indigence or domestic service, but totally extinguished by commerce or industry. This policy perpetually withheld from the great body of serfs the use of arms, because they had learned to fear, but still continued to despise them. In fine, jealous of every species of superiority as a personal outrage, of every authority as a usurpation, of every labour as a degrada- tion, this society was at variance with every principle of human pros- perity. " Weakened in this manner in their external contests, by their equality not less than their tyranny, inferior to their neighbours in number and dis- cipline, the Poles were the only warlike people in the world to whom vic- tory never gave either peace or conquest. Incessant contests with the Ger- mans, the Hungarians, the pirates of the north, the Cossacks of the Ukraine, the Osmanlis, occupy their whole annals ; but never did the Polish eagles advance the frontiers of the republic. -Poland saw Moravia, Brandenburg, Pomerania, escape from its government, as Bohemia and Mecklenburg had formerly done, without ever being awakened to the necessity of establish- ing a central government sufficiently strong to coerce and protect so many discordant materials. She was destined to drink to the last dregs the bitter consequences of a pitiless aristocracy and a senseless equality. " Vainly did Time, whose ceaseless course, by breaking through that POLAXD. 263 fierce and oppressive equality, had succeeded where its monarchs had failed, strive to introduce a better order of things. Poland was destined, in all the ages of its history, to differ from all the other European states. With the progress of wealtii, a race of burghers at length sprung up — an aristocracy of wealth and possessions arose ; but both, contrary to the genius of the people, perished before they arrived at maturity. The first was speedily overthrown ; in the convulsion consequent upon the establishment of the last, the national independence was destroyed." — Yol. i. 74. Of the practical consequences of this fatal passion for equality in the legislature and the form of government, our author gives the following curious account : — " The extreme difiiculty of providing food for their comitia of a hundred thousand citizens on horseback, obliged the members of the Diet to ter- minate their deliberations in a few days — or rather to separate, after having devoured all the food in the country, commenced a civil war, and determined nothing. The constant recurrence of such disasters at length led to an attempt to introduce territorial deputies, invested with full power to carry on the ordinary and routine business of the state. But so adverse was any delegation of authority to the original nature of Polish independence, that this beneficial institution never was established in Poland but in the most incomplete manner. Its introduction corrected none of the ancient abuses. The Iving was still the president of tumultuous assemblies ; surrounded by obstacles on every side ; controlled by generals and ministers not of his own selection ; obliged to defend the acts of a cabinet which he could not con- trol, against the cries of a furious diet. And these diets, which united, sabre in hand, under the eye of the sovereign, and still treated of all the impor- tant aftairs of the state— of war and peace, the election of a sovereign, the formation of laws — which gave audience to ambassadors, and administered justice in important cases — were still the Champs de Mars of the northern tribes, and partook to the very last of all the vices of the savage character. There was the same confusion of powers, the same elements of disorder, the same license to themselves, the same tp-anny over others. '' This attempt at a representative government was destructive to the last shadow of the royal authority ; the meetings of the deputies became fixed and frequent ; the power of the sovereign was lost without any permanent body arising to receive it in his room. The system of deputations made slow progress ; and in several provinces was never admitted. General diets where the whole nation assembled became more rare, and therefore more perilous ; and as they were convoked only on great occasions, and to discuss weighty interests, the fervour of passion was superadded to the inexperi- ence of business. '' Speedily the representative assemblies became the object of jealousy on the part of this democratic race ; and the citizens of the republic sought only to limit the powers which they had conferred on their representatives. Often the jealous multitude, terrified at the powers with which they had invested the deputies, were seized with a sudden panic, and hastened toge- ther from all quarters, with their arms in their hands, to watch over their proceedings. Such assemblies were styled ' Diets under the Buckler.' But generally they restricted and qualified their powers at the moment of elec- tion. The electors confined their parliaments to a circle of limited ques- tions : gave them obligatory directions ; and held^ after every session, what they called post-comitial diets, the object of which was to exact from every deputy a rigid account of the execidion of his mandate. Thus every question of importance was, in effect, decided in the provinces before it was debated in 264 POLAND. the national assembly. And, as nnanimity was still considered essential to a decision, the passingof any legislative act became impossible when there was any variance among the instructions to the deputies. Thus the majority were compelled to disregard the protestations of the minority ; and, to guard against that tyranny, the only remedy seemed to be to establish, in favour of the outvoted minority, the right of civil war. Confederations were established ; armed leagues, formed of discontented nobles, who elected a marshal or pre- sident, and opposed decrees to decrees, force to force, diet to diet, tribune to tribune ; and had alternately the King for its leader and its captive. What deplorable institutions, which opened to all the discontented a legal channel for spreading anarchy through their country ! The only astonish- ing thing is, that the valour of the Polish nobility so long succeeded in con- cealing these mortal defects in their institutions. One would have imagined that a nation, under such customs, could not exist a year ; and yet it seemed never weary either of victories or folly." — Yol. i. 116. No apology is necessary for the length of these quotations ; for they are not only illustrative of the causes of the uniform disasters of Poland, but eminently instructive as to the ten- dency of democratic institutions all over the world. There is no danger that the inhabitants of England or France will flock in person to the opening of Parliament, and establish diets of two or three hundred thousand free- men, with sabres by their sides ; but there is a very great danger that they will adopt the democratic jealousy of their representatives, and bind them down by fixed in- structions to a course of conduct which will both render nugatory all the advantages of a deliberative assembly, and sow the seeds of dissension, jealousy, and civil war between the different members of the state. This is the more to be apprehended, because this evil was felt in the strongest manner in France during the progress of the Revolution, and has appeared in America most remarkably even during the brief period of its political existence. The Legislators of America are not in any sense statesmen ; they are merely delegates, bound to obey the directions of their constituents, and sent there to forward the individual interest of the province, district, or borough which they represent. Their debates are languid and unin- teresting ; conducted with no idea whatever of convincing, but merely of showing the constituents of each member what he had done for his daily hire of seven dollars. The Constituent Assembly met, with caliiers or instructions to the deputies from all the electors ; and so much did this jealousy of the legislature increase with the progress of the movements in France, tliat the surest road to popularity POLAND. 265 with the electors was soon found to be, the most abject pro- fessions of submission to their will. Every one knows how long and yehementlj annual parliaments have been de- manded by the EngHsh Radicals, in order to give them an opportunity of constantly exercising this surveillance over their representatives ; and how many members of the pre- sent House of Commons are under a positive pledge to their constituents on more than one momentous question. It is interesting to observe how much mankind, under all varieties of climate, situation, and circumstances, are governed by the same principles ; and to trace the working of the same causes in Polish anarchy, French revolutions, American selfishness, and British democracy. Whoever considers the matter dispassionately, and attends to the lessons of history, must arrive at the conclusion, that this democratic spirit cannot coexist with regular govern- ment or national independence in ancient states ; and that Polish anarchy is the necessary prelude in all such commu- nities to Muscovite oppression. The reason is eternal, and, being founded in the nature of things, must be the same in all ages. When the true democratic spirit is once gene- rally diffused, men invariably acquire such an inordinate jealousy of their superiors that they thwart all measures, even of the most obvious and undeniable utility ; and, by a perpetual change of governors, gratify their own equal- ising spirit at the expense of the best interests of the state. This disposition appears at present in France and England in the rapid changes of administration which have taken place within the last few years, to the total destruction of any uniformity of government, or the prosecution of any systematic plan for the public good : it appears in America in the execrable system of rotation of office — in other words, of the expulsion of every man from official situations, the moment he becomes qualified to hold them, which a recent able observer has so well exposed;'" it appeared in Poland in the uniform weakness of the executive, and periodical returns of anarchy, which rendered them, in despite of their native valour, unfortunate in every contest, and at last led to the partition of the republic. Never was there a truer observation, than that wherever * Captain Hall. 266 POLAND. the tendency of prevailing institutions is hurtful, there is an under current perpetually flowing, destined to correct them. As this equalising and democratic spirit is utterly destruc- tive to the best interests of society, and the happiness of the very people who indulge in it, so, by the wisdom of nature, it leads rapidly and certainly to its own destruction. The moment that it became paramount in the Roman Republic, it led to the civil convulsions which brought on the despotism of the Caesars ; its career was rapidly cut short in France by the sword of Napoleon ; it exterminated Poland from the book of nations ; it threatens to close the long line of British greatness ; it will convulse or subjugate America, the moment tliat growing republic is brought in contact with warlike neighbours, or finds the safety-valve of the back settlements closed against the escape of turbu- lent multitudes. The father of John Sobieski, whose estates lay in the Ukraine, has left a curious account of the manners and habits of the Cossacks in his time, which was about two hundred years ago. " The great majority," said he, " of these wandering tribes think of nothing but the affairs of their little families, and encamp, as it were, in the midst of the towns which belong to the crown or the noblesse. They interrupt the ennui of repose by frequent assemblies, and their comitia are generally civil wars, often attended by profuse bloodshed. It is there that they choose their hetman, or chief, by acclamation, followed by throwing their bearskin caps in the air. Such is the inconstancy in the multitude that they frequently destroy their own work; but as long as the hetman remains in power, he has the right of life and death. The town Tretchmiron, in Kiovia, is the arsenal of their warlike implements and their treasure. There is deposited the booty taken by their pirates in Romelia and Asia Minor; and there are also preserved, with religious care, the immunities granted to their nation by the republic. There are displayed the standards which the king sends them, whenever they take up arms for the service of the republic. It is round this royal standard that the nation assemble in their comitia. The hetman there does not presume to address the multitude but with his head uncovered, with a respectful air, ready to exculpate POLAND. 267 himself from all the charges brought agamst him, and to solicit humbly his share of the spoils taken from the enemies. These fierce peasants are passionately fond of war; few are acquainted with the use of the musket; the pistol and sabre are their ordinary weapons. Thanks to their light and courageous squadrons, Poland can face the infantry of the most powerful nations on earth. They are as serviceable in retreat as in success; when discomfited, they form, with their chariots ranged in several lines in a circular form, an intrenched camp, to which no other fortifications can be compared. Behind that defence, they defy the attacks of the most formidable enemy." Of the species of troops who composed the Polish army, our author gives the following curious account, — a striking proof of the national weakness that follows the fatal passion for equality, which formed their grand national characteristic : " Five different kinds of soldiers composed tlie Polish army. There was, in the first place, the mercenaries, composed of Hungarians, Wallachians, Cossacks, Tartars, and Germans, who would have formed the strength and nucleus of the army, had it not been that, on the least delay in their payments, they invariably turned their arms against the government : the national troops, to whose maintenance a fourth of the national revenue was devoted : the volunteers, nnder which name were included the levies of the great nobles, and the ordinary guards which they maintained in time of peace : the Pospolitc^ that is, the array of the whole free citizens, who, after three summonses from the king, were obliged to come forth under the banners of their respective palatines, l)ut only to remain a few months in the field, and who could not be ordered beyond the frontiers. This last unwieldy body, however brave, was totally deficient in discipline, and in general served only to manifest the weakness of the republic. It was seldom called forth but in civil wars. The legions of valets, grooms, and drivers, who encumbered the other force, may be termed a fifth branch of the military force of Poland ; but these fierce retainers, naturally warlike and irascible, injured the army more by their pillage and dissensions, than they assisted it by their numbers. " All these difi'erent troops were deficient in equipment ; obliged to pro- vide themselves with everything, and to collect their subsistence by their own authority, they were encumbered with an incredible quantity of baggage-waggons, destined, for the most part, less to convey provisions than to carry oft' plunder. They had no corps of engineers ; the artillery, composed of a few pieces of small calibre, had no other ofiicers than a few French adventurers, upon whose adherence to the republic implicit reliance could not be placed. The infantry were few in number, composed entirely of the mercenary and royal troops ; but this arm was regarded with con- tempt by the haughty nobility. The foot- soldiers were employed in digging ditches, throwing bridges, and cutting down forests, rather than actual warfare. Sobieski was exceedingly desirous of having in his camp a con- siderable force of infantry ; but two invincible obstacles prevented it, — the prejudices of the country, and the penury of the royal treasury. 268 POLAND. " The whole body of the Pospolite, the volunteers, the valeis d'armee, and a large part of the mercenaries and national troops, sensed on horseback. The heavy cavalry, in particular, constituted the strength of the armies ; there were to be found united, riches, splendour, and number. They were divided into cuirassiers and hussars — the former clothed in steel, man and horse bearing casque and cuirass, lance and sabre, bows and carbines ; the latter defended only by a twisted hauberk, which descended from the head, over the shoulders and breast, and armed with a sabre and pistol. Both were distinguished by the splendour of their dress and equipage, and the number and costly array of their mounted servants, accoutred in the most bizarre manner, with huge black plumes, and skins of bears and other wild beasts. It was the boast of this body, that they were composed of men all measured, as they expressed it, by the same standard ; that is, equal in nobility, equally enjoying the rights to obey only their God and their swords, and equally destined, perhaps, to step one day into the throne of the Piasts and the Jagellons. The hussars and cuirassiers were called Towarzirz^ that is, companions ; they called each other by that name, and they were designated in the same way by the sovereign, whose chief boast was to be Primus inter pares ^ the first among equals." — Vol. i. 129. With so motley and discordant a force, it is not surpris- ing that Poland was unable to make head against the steady ambition and regular forces of the military monar- chies with which it was surrounded. Its history accordingly exhibits the usual feature of all democratic societies — occa- sional bursts of patriotism, and splendid efforts followed by dejection, anarchy, and misrule. It is a stormy night illuminated by occasional flashes of lightning, never by the steady radiance of the morning sun. One of the most glorious of these flashes is the victory of Kotzim, the first great achievement of John Sobieski. " Kotzim is a strong castle, situated four leagues from Kamaniek, on a rocky projection which runs into the Dnieper, impregnable from the river, and surrounded on the other side by deep and rocky ravines. A bridge thrown over one of them united it to the intrenched camp where Hussein Pasha had posted his army. That camp, defended by ancient fieldworks, extended along the banks of the Dnieper, and was guarded on the side of Moldavia, the sole accessible quarter, by precipices cut in the solid rock, and impassable morasses. The art of the Ottomans had added to the natural strength of the position : the plain over which, after the example of the Romans, that military colony was intended to rule, was intersected to a great distance by canals and ditches, whose banks were strengthened by palisades. A powerful artillery defended all the avenues to the camp, and there reposed, under magnificent tents, the Turkish generalissimo and eighty thousand veterans, when they were suddenly startled by the sight of the Polish banners, which moved in splendid array round tlieir intrench- ments, and took up a position almost under the fire of their artillery. " The spot was animating to the recollections of the Christian host. Fifty years before, James Sobieski had conquered a glorious peace under the walls of that very castle : and against its ramparts, after the disaster of the Kobilta, the power of the young Sultan Osman had dashed in vain. Now the sides were changed ; the Turks held the intrenched camp, and the army of the son of James Sobieski filled the plain. POLAND. 269 " The smaller force had now to make the assault : the larger army was intrenched behind ramparts better fortified, better armed with cannon, than those which Sultan Osman and his three hundred thousand Mussulmans sought in vain to wrest from the feeble army of Wladislaus. The Turks were now grown gray in victories, and the assailants were young troops, for the most part ill armed, assembled in haste, destitute of resources, magazines, or provisions — worn out with the fatigues and the privations ot a winter campaign. Deep ditches, the rocky bed of torrents, precipitous walls of rock, composed the field of battle on which they were called on to combat an enemy reposing tranquilly under the laurels of victory, beneath sumptuous tents, and behind ramparts defended by an array of three hundred pieces of cannon. The night passed on the Polish side in mortal disquietude ; the mind of the general, equally with the soldiers, was overwhelmed with anxiety. The enterprise which lie had undertaken seemed above human strength ; the army had no chance of safety but in victory, and there was too much reason to fear that treachery, or division in his own troops, would snatch it from his grasp, and deliver down his name with disgrace to posterity. " Sobieski alone was inaccessible to fear. When the troops were drawn forth on the following morning, the Grand Hetman of Lithuania declared the attack desperate, and his resolution to retreat. ' Retreat,' cried the Polish hero, ' is impossible. We should only find a disgraceful death in the morasses with which we are surrounded, a few leagues from hence ; better far to brave it at the foot of the enemy's intrenchments. But what ground is there for apprehension? Kothing disquiets me but what I hear from you. Your menaces are our only danger. I am confident you will not execute them. If Poland is to be effaced from the book of nations, you will not allow our children to exclaim, that if a Paz had not fled, they would not have wanted a country.' Vanquished by the magnanimity of Sobieski, and the cries of Sapieha and Radziwik, the Lithuanian chief promised not to desert his countrymen. " Sobieski then ranged his faltering battalions in order of battle, and the Turks made preparations to receive behind their intrenchments the seem- ingly hopeless attack of the Christians. Their forces were ranged in a semicircle, and their forty field-pieces, advanced in front, battered in breach the palisades which were placed across the approaches to the Turkish camp. Kouski, the commander of the artillery, performed under the supe- rior fire of the enemy prodigies of valour. The breaches were declared practicable in the evening ; and when night came, the Christian forces of the two principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia deserted the camp of the Infidels, to range themselves under the standard of the Cross ; a cheering omen, for troops never desert but to the side which they imagine will prove successful. '•'• The weather was dreadful ; the snow fell in gi'eat quantities ; the ranks were obstructed by its drifts. In the midst of that severe tempest, Sobieski kept his troops under arms the whole night. In the morning they were buried in the snow, exhausted by cold and suffering. Then he gave the signal of attack. ' Companions,' said he, in passing through the lines, his clothes, his hair, his mustaches covered with icicles, ' I deliver to you an enemy already half vanquished. You have suffered, the Turks are exhausted. The troops of Asia can never endure the hardships of the last twenty-four hours. The cold has conquered them to our hand. Whole troops of them are already sinking under their sufferings, while we, inured to the climate, are only animated by it to fresh exertions. It is for us to save the republic from shame and slavery. Soldiers of Poland ! recollect that you fight for your country, and that Jesus Christ combats for you.' " Sobieski had thrice heard mass since the rising of the sun. The day was the fete of St Martin of Tours. The chiefs founded great hopes on his 270 POLAND. intercession: the priests, who had followed their masters to the field of battle, traversed the ranks, recounting the actions of that great apostle of the French, and all that they might expect from his known zeal for the faith. He was a Slavonian by birth. Could there be any doubt, then, that the Christians would triumph when his glory was on that day in so peculiar a manner interested in performing miracles in their favour? " An accidental circumstance gave the highest appearance of truth to these ideas. The Grand Marshal, who had just completed his last recon- noissance of the enemy's lines, returned with his countenance illuminated by the presages of victory. ' My companions,' he exclaimed, ' in half-an- hour we shall be lodged under these gilded tents.' In fact, he had discovered that the point against which he intended to direct his principal attack was only defended by a few troops benumbed by the cold. He immediately made several feigned assaults to distract the attention of the enemy, and directed against the palisades, by which he intended to enter, the fire of a battery already erected. The soldiers immediately recollected that the preceding evening they had made the utmost efi'orts to draw the cannon beyond that point, but that a power apparently more than human had chained them to the spot, from whence now they easily beat down the obstacles to the army's advance, and cleared the road to victory. Who was so blind as not to see in that circumstance the miraculous intervention of Martin of Tours? "At that moment the army knelt down to receive the benediction of Father Przeborowski, confessor of the Grand Hetman ; and his prayer being concluded, Sobieski, dismounting from his horse, ordered his infantry to move forward to the assault of the newly opened breach in the palisades, he himself, sword in hand, directing the way. The armed valets followed rapidly in their footsteps. That courageous band were never afraid to tread the path of danger in the hope of plunder. In a moment the ditches were filled up and passed ; with one bound the troops arrived at the foot of the rocks. The Grand Hetman, after that first success, had hardly time to remount on horseback, when, on the heights of the intrenched camp, were seen the standard of the cross and the eagle of Poland. Petrikowski and Denhoff, of the royal race of the Piasts, had first mounted the ramparts, and raised their ensigns. At this joyful sight, a hurra of triumph rose from the Polish ranks, and rent the heavens. The Turks were seized with consterna- tion ; they had been confounded at that sudden attack, made at a time when they imagined the severity of the weather had made the Christians renounce their perilous enterprise. Such was the confusion that, but for the extraor- dinary strength of the position, they could not have stood a moment. At this critical juncture, Hussein, deceived by a false attack of Czarnicki, hastened with his cavalry to the other side of the camp, and the spahis, conceiving that he was flying, speedily took to flight. " But the Janizzaries were not yet vanquished. Innured to arms, they rapidly formed their ranks, and falling upon the valets, who had dispersed in search of plunder, easily put them to the sword. Fortunately, Sobieski had had time to employ his foot-soldiers in levelling the ground, and render- ing accessible the approaches to the summits of the hills. The Polish cavalry came rushing in with a noise like thunder. The hussars, the cuirassiers, with burning torches affixed to their lances, scaled precipices which seemed hardly accessible to foot-soldiers. Inactive till that moment, Paz now roused his strength. Ever the rival of Sobieski, he rushed forward with his Lithuanian nobles in the midst of every danger, to endeavour to arrive first in the Ottoman camp. It was too late ; — already the flaming lances of the Grand Hetman gleamed on the summits of the intrenchments, and, ever attentive to the duties of a commander, Sobieski was employed in re-forming the ranks of the assailants, disordered by the assault and their success, and preparing for a new battle in the midst of that city of tents, which, though surprised, seemed not subdued. POLAND. 271 " But the astonishment and confusion of the besieged, the cries of the women shut up in the Harems, the thundering charges of the heavy squa- drons clothed in steel invulnerable, and composed of impetuous young men, gave the Turks no time to recover from their consternation. It was no longer a battle, but a massacre. Demetrius and the Lithuanian met at the same time in the invaded camp. A cry of horror now rose from the Turkish ranks, and they rushed in crowds to the bridge of boats which crossed the Dnieper, and formed the sole communication between Kotzim and the for- tified city of Kamaniek. In the struggle to reach this sole outlet from destruction, multitudes killed each other. But Sobieski's foresight had deprived the vanquished even of this last resource. His brother-in-law, Radzewil, had during the tumult glided unperceived through the bottom of the ravines, and at the critical moment made himself master of the bridge, and the heights which commanded it. The only resource of the fugitives was now to throw themselves into the waves. 20,000 men perished at that fatal point, either on the shores or in the half-congealed stream. Insatiable in carnage, the hussars led by Maziniki pursued them on horseback into the bed of the Dnieper, and sabred thousands when struggling in the stream. 40,000 dead bodies were found in the precincts of the camp. The water of the river for several leagues ran red with blood, and corpses were thrown up with every wave on its deserted shores. " At the news of this extraordinary triumph, the Capitan Pasha, who was advancing with a fresh army to invade Poland, set fire to his camp, and hastened across the Danube. The Moldavians and Wallachians made their submission to the conqueror, and the Turks, recently so arrogant, began to tremble for their capital. Europe, electrified with these successes, returned thanks for the greatest victory gained for three centuries over the Infidels. Christendom quivered with joy, as if it had just escaped from ignominy and bondage."— Vol. ii. 130-153. " But while Europe was awaiting the intelligence of the completion of the overthrow of the Osmanlis, desertion and flight had ruined the Polish army. Whole Palatinates had abandoned their colours. They were desirous to carry otf in safety the spoils of the East, and to prepare for that new field of battle which the election of the King of Poland, who died at this juncture, presented. Sobieski remained almost alone on the banks of the Dnieper. At the moment when Wallachia and Moldavia were throwing themselves under the protection of the Polish crown, when the Capitan Pasha was flying to the foot of the Balkan, and Sobieski was dreaming of changing the face of the world, his army dissolved. The Turks, at this unexpected piece of fortune, recovered from their terror, and the rule of the Mussulmans was perpetuated for two centuries in Europe." — Vol. ii. 165. This victory, and the subsequent dissolution of the armj, so characteristic both of the glories and the inconstancy of Poland, great as it was, was eclipsed by the splendours of the deliverance of Vienna. The account of the previous election of this great man to the throne of Poland is singu- larly characteristic of Polish manners. " The plain of Yola to the west of Warsaw had been the theatre, from the earliest times, of the popular elections. Already the impatient Pospo- lite covered that vast extent with its waves, like an army prepared to com- mence an assault on a fortified town. The innumerable piles of arms ; the immense tables round which faction united their supporters ; a thousand jousts with the javelin or the lance ; a thousand squadrons engaged in mimic war ; a thousand parties of palatines, governors of castles, and other dignified 272 POLAND. authorities who traversed the ranks distributing exhortations, party songs, and largesses ; a thousand cavalcades of gentlemen, who rode, according to custom, with their battle-axes by their sides, and discussed at the gallop the dearest interests of the republic ; innumerable quarrels, originating in drunkenness, and terminating in blood : such were the scenes of tumult, amusement, and war — a faithful mirror of Poland — which, as far as the eye could reach, filled the plain. " The arena was closed in bj a vast circle of tents, Avhich embraced, as in an immense girdle, the plain of Vola, the shores of the Vistula, and the spires of Warsaw. The horizon seemed bounded by a range of snowy mountains, of which the summits were portrayed in the hazy distance by their dazzling whiteness. Their camp formed another city, with its mar- kets, its gardens, its hotels, and its monuments. There the great displayed their Oriental magnificence ; the nobles, the palatines, vied with each other in the splendour of their horses and equipage ; and the stranger who beheld for the first time that luxury, worthy of the last and greatest of the Nomade peoples, was never weary of admiring the immense hotels, the porticoes, the colonnades, the galleries of painted or gilded stuffs, the castles of cotton and silk, with their drawbridges, towers, and ditches. Thanks to the recent victory, a great part of these riches had been taken from the Turks. Judg- ing from the multitude of stalls, kitchens, baths, audience chambers, the elegance of the Oriental architecture, the taste of the designs, the profusion of gilded crosses, domes, and pagodas, you would imagine that the seraglio of some Eastern sultan had been transported by enchantment to the banks of the Vistula. Victory had accomplished this prodigy — these were the tents of Mahomet IV., taken at the battle of Kotzim ; and though Sobieski was absent, his triumphant arms surmounted the crescent of Mahomet. '* The Lithuanians were encamped on the opposite shores of the Vistula ; and their Grand Hetman, Michel Paz, had brought up his whole force to dictate laws, as it were, to the Polish crown. Sobieski had previously occu- pied the bridge over the river by a regiment of hussars, upon which the Lithuanians seized every house in the city which wealth could command. These hostile dispositions were too significant of frightful disorders. War soon ensued, in the midst of the rejoicings, between Lithuania and Poland. Every time the opposite factions met, their strife terminated in bloodshed. The hostilities extended even to the bloody game of the Klopiches, which was played by a confederation of the boys in the city, or of pages and valets, who amused themselves by forming troops, electing a marshal, choosing a field of battle, and fighting there to the last extremity. On this occasion they were divided into corps of Lithuanians and Poles, who hoisted the colours of their respective states, got firearms to imitate more completely the habits of the equestrian order, and disturbed the plain everywhere by their marches, or terrified it by their assaults. Their shock desolated the plain ; the villages were in flames ; the savage huts of which the suburbs of Warsaw were then composed, were incessantly invaded and sacked in that terrible sport, invented apparently to inure the youth to civil war, and extend even to the slaves the enjoyments of anarchy. " On the day of the elections, the three orders mounted on horseback. The princes, the palatines, the bishops, the prelates, proceeded towards the plain of Vola, surrounded by 80,000 mounted citizens, any one of whom might, at the expiry of a few hours, find himself King of Poland. They all bore in their countenances, even under the livery or banners of a master, the pride arising from that ruinous privilege. The European dress nowhere appeared on that solemn occasion. The children of the desert strove to hide the furs and skins in which they were clothed under chains of gold and the glitter of jewels. Their bonnets were composed of panther skin, plumes of eagles or herons surmounted them ; on their front were the most splendid precious stones. Their robes of sable or ermine were bound with velvet or POLAND. 273 silver ; tLeir girdle studded with jewels ; over all their furs were suspended chains of diamonds. One hand of each nobleman was without a glove ; on it was the splendid ring on which the arms of his family were engraved— the mark, as in ancient Rome, of the equestrian order. A new proof of this intimate connection between the race, the customs, and the traditions of the northern tribes, and the founders of the Eternal City. " But nothing in this rivalry of magnificence could equal the splendour of their anus. Double poniards, double scimitars, set with brilliants ; buck- lers of costly workmanship, battle-axes enriched in silver, and glittering with emeralds and sapphires ; bows and arrows richly gilt, which w^ere borne at festivals, in remembrance of the ancient customs of the country, were to be seen on every side. The horses shared in this melange of barbarism and refinement ; sometimes cased in iron, at others decorated with the richest colours, they bent under the weight of the sabres, the lances, and javelins by which the senatorial order marked their rank. The bishops were distin- guished by theii' gi'ay or green hats, and yellow or red pantaloons, magnifi- cently embroidered with divers colours. Often they laid aside their pastoral habits, and signalised their address as young cavaliers, by the beauty of their arms, and the management of their horses. In that crowd of the equestrian order, there was no gentleman so humble as not to try to rival this magnificence. Many carried, in furs and arms, their whole fortunes on their backs. Numbers had sold their votes to some of the candidates, for the vanity of appearing with some additional ornament before their fellow- citizens. And the people, whose dazzled eyes beheld all this magnificence, w^ere almost without clothing ; their long beards, naked legs, and filth, indi- cated, even more strongly than their pale visages and dejected air, all the miseries of servitude." — Vol. ii. 190-197. The achievement which has immortahsed the name of John Sobieski is the deliverance of Vienna in 1683. Of this glorious achievement M. Salvandj gives the following inter- esting account : — " After a siege of eight months, and open trenches for sixty days, Vienna was reduced to the last extremity. Famine, disease, and the sword, had cut off two-thirds of its garrison ; and the inhabitants, depressed by incessant toil for the last six months, and sickened by long- deferred hope, were given up to despair. Many breaches were made in the walls ; the massy bastions were crumbling in ruins, and intrenchments thrown up in haste in the streets formed the last resource of the German capital. Stahremborg, the governor, had announced the necessity of surrendering if not relieved in three days ; and every night signals of distress from the summits of the steeples, announced the extremities to which they were reduced. " One evening, the sentinel who was on the watch at the top of the steeple of St Stephen's, perceived a blazing flame on the summits of the Calemberg ; soon after an army was seen preparing to descend the ridge. Every tele- scope was now turned in that direction, and from the brilliancy of their lances, and the splendour of their banners, it was easy to see that it was the Hussars of Poland, so redoubtable to the Osmanlis, who w^ere approaching. The Turks were immediately to be seen dividing their vast host into two, one destined to oppose this new enemy, and one to continue the assaults on the besieged. At the sight of the terrible conflict wliich was approaching, the women and children flocked to the churches, while Stahremborg led forth all that remained of the men to the breaches. " The Duke of Lorraine set forth with a few horsemen to join the King of Poland, and learn the art of war, as he expressed it, under so great a master. The two illustrious commanders soon concerted a plan of operations, and VOL. III. S 274 POLAND. Sobieski encamped on the Danube, with all his forces united to the troops of the empire. It was with tears of joy that the sovereigns, generals, and the soldiers of the Imperialists, received the illustrious chief whom heaven had sent to their relief. Before his arrival discord reigned in their camp, but all now yielded obedience to the Polish hero. " The Duke of Lorraine had previously constructed at Tuln, six leagues below Vienna, a triple bridge, which Kara Mustapha, the Turkish com- mander, allowed to be formed without opposition. The German Electors nevertheless hesitated to cross the river ; the severity of the weather, long rains, and roads now almost impassable, augmented their alarms. But the King of Poland was a stranger alike to hesitation as fear : the state of Vienna would admit of no delay. The last despatch of Stahremborg was simply in these words: 'There is no time to lose.' — 'There is no reverse to fear,' exclaimed Sobieski; 'the general who at the head of 300,000 men could allow that bridge to be constructed in his teeth, cannot fail to be defeated.' " On the following day the liberators of Christendom passed in review before their allies. The Poles marched first ; the spectators were astonished at the magnificence of their arms, the splendour of the dresses, and the beauty of the horses. The infantry was less brilliant ; one regiment in particular, by its battered appearance, hurt the pride of the monarch — ' Look well at those brave men,' said he to the Imperialists, ' it is an invincible battalion, who have sworn never to renew their clothing, till they are arrayed in the spoils of the Turks.' These words M^ere repeated to the regiments: if they did not, says the annalist, clothe them, they encircled every man with a cuirass. " The Christian army, when all assembled, amounted to 70,000 men, of whom only 30,000 were infantry. Of these the Poles were 18,000. The principal disquietude of the king was on account of the absence of the Cossacks, whom Mynzwicki had promised to bring up to his assistance. He well knew what admirable scouts they formed ; the Tartars had always found in them their most formidable enemies. Long experience in the Turkish wars had rendered them exceedingly skilful in this species of war- fare ; no other force was equal to them in seizing prisoners and gaining intelligence. They were promised ten crowns for every man they brought in after this manner : they led their captives to the tent of their king, where they got their promised reward, and went away saying, ' John, I have touched my money, God will repay you.' Bereaved of these faithful assist- ants, the king was compelled to expose his hussars in exploring the dan- gerous defiles in which the army was about to engage. The Imperialists, who could not comprehend his attachment to that undisciplined militia, were astonished to hear him incessantly exclaiming, ' Oh, Mynzwicki ! Oh, Mynzwicki ! '" A rockj chain, full of narrow and precipitous ravines, of woods and rocks, called the Calemberg in modern times, the Mons iEtius of the Romans, separated the two armies : the cause of Christendom from that of Mahomet. It was neces- sary to scale that formidable barrier; for the mountains advanced with a rockv front into the middle of the Danube. Fortunately the negligence of the Turks had omitted to for- tify these posts, where a few battalions might have arrested the Polish army. " Nothing could equal the confidence of the Turks but the disquietude of the Imperialists. Such was the terror impressed by the vast host of the jNIussulmans, that at the first cry of ' Allah !' whole battalions took to flight. ISfany thousand peasants were incessantly engaged in levelling the roads POLAXD. 275 over the mountains, or cutting through the forest. The foot- soldiers dragged the artillery with their arms, and were compelled to abandon the heavier pieces. Chiefs and soldiers carried each his own provisions : the leaves of the oak formed the sole subsistence of the horses. Some scouts reached the summits of the ridge long before the remainder of the army, and from thence beheld the countless myriads of the Turkish tents extending to the walls of Vienna. Terrified at the sight, they retiiraed in dismay, and a contagious panic began to spread through the army. The king had need, to reassure his troops, of all the security of his countenance, the gaiety of his discourse, and the remembrance of the multitudes of the Infidels whom he had dispersed in his life. The Janissaries of his guard, who surrounded him on the march, were so many living monuments of his victories, and every one was asto- nished that he ventured to attack the Mussulmans with such an escort. He offered to send them to the rear, or even to give them a safe conduct to the Turkish camp ; but they all answered with tears in their eyes, that they would live and die with him. His heroism subjugated alike Infidels and Christians, chiefs and soldiers. "At length, on Saturday, September 11th, the army encamped, at eleven o'clock in the forenoon, on the sterile and inhospitable summit of the Calem- berg, and occupied the convent of Camaldoli and the old castle of Leopolds- burg. Far beneath extended the vast and uneven plain of Austria, its smoking capital, the gilded tents, and countless host of the besiegers; while at the foot of the ridge, where the mountains sink into the plain, the forests and ravines were occupied by the advanced guards, prepared to dispute the passage of the army." There it was that thej lighted the fires which spread joj and hope through every heart at Vienna. " Trusting in their vast multitudes, the Turks pressed the assault of Vienna on the one side, while on the other they faced the liberating army. The Turkish vizier counted in his ranks four Christian princes and as many Tartar chiefs. All the nobles of Germany and Poland were on the other side : Sobieski was at once the Agamemnon and Achilles of that splendid host. " The young Eugene of Savoy made his first essay in arms, by bringing to Sobieski the intelligence that the engagement was commenced between the advanced guards at the foot of the ridge. The Christians immediately descended the mountains in five columns like torrents, but marching in the finest order ; the leading divisions halted at every hundred paces to give time to those behind, who were retarded by the difficulties of the descent, to join them. A rude parapet, hastily erected by the Turks to bar the five debouches of the roads into the plain, was forced after a short combat. At every ravine, the Christians experienced fresh obstacles to surmount ; the spahis dismounted to contest the rocky ascents, and, speedily regaining their horses when they were forced, fell back in haste to the next positions which were to be defended. But the Mussulmans, deficient in infantry, could not withstand the steady advance and solid masses of the Germans, and the Christians everywhere gained ground. Animated by the continued advance of their deliverers, the garrison of Vienna performed miracles on the breach ; and Kara Mustapha, who long hesitated which battle he should join, resolved to meet the avenging squadrons of the Polish king. " By two o'clock the ravines were cleared, and the allies drawn up in the plain. Sobieski ordered the Duke of Lorraine to halt, to give time for the Poles, who had been retarded by a circuitous march, to join the army. At eleven they appeared, and took their post on the right. The Imperial eagles saluted the squadrons of gilded cuirasses with cries of ' Long live King John Sobieski!' and the cry, repeated along the Christian line, startled the Mus- sulman force. 276 POLAXD. " Sobieski charged in the centre, and directed his attack against the scar- let tent of the Saltan, surrounded by his faithful squadrons ; distinguished by his splendid plume, his bow, and quiver of gold, which hung on his shoulder — most of all by the enthusiasm which his presence everywhere excited. He advanced exclaiming, ' Xon nobis, Domine, sed tibi sit gloria !' The Tartars and the spahis fled when they heard the name of the Polish hero repeated from one end to the other of the Ottoman lines. ' By Allah !' exclaimed Sultan Gieray, ' the King is with them !' At this moment the moon was eclipsed, and the Mahommedans beheld with dread the crescent waning in the heavens. " At the same time the hussars of Prince Alexander, who formed the leading column, broke into a charge amidst the national cry, ' God defend Poland!' The remaining squadrons, led by all that was noblest and bravest in the country, resplendent in arms, buoyant in courage, followed at the gallop. They cleared, without drawing bridle, a ravine at which infantry might have paused, and charged furiously up the opposite bank. AVith such vehemence did they enter the enemy's ranks, that they fairly cut the army in two,— justifying thus the celebrated saying of that haughty nobility to one of their kings, that with their aid no reverse was irreparable ; and that if the heaven itself were to fall, they would support it on the points of their lances. " The shock was so violent, that almost all the lances were splintered. The Pashas of Aleppo and of Silistria were slain on the spot ; four other pashas fell under the sabres of Jablonowski. At the same time Charles of Lorraine had routed the force of the principalities, and threatened the Otto- man camp. Kara Mustapha fell at once from the heights of confidence to the depths of despair. Can you not aid me?' said he to the Kara of the Crimea, ' I know the King of Poland,' said he ; ' and I tell you that, with such an enemy, we have no chance of safety but in flight.' Mustapha in vain strove to rally his troops ; all, seized with a sudden panic, fled, not daring to lift their eyes to heaven. The cause of Europe, of Christianity, of civi- lisation, had prevailed. The wave of the Mussulman power had retired, and retired never to return, " At six in the evening, Sobieski entered the Turkish camp. He arrived first at the quarters of the vizier. At the entrance of that vast enclosure a slave met him, and presented him with the charger and golden bridle of Mustapha. He took the bridle, and ordered one of his followers to set out in haste for the Queen of Poland, and say that he who owned that bridle was vanquished ; then planted his standard in the midst of that armed cara- vansery of all the nations of the East, and ordered Charles of Lorraine to drive the besiegers from the trenches before Vienna. It was already done ; the Janissaries had left their posts on the approach of night, and, after sixty days of open trenches, the imperial city was delivered. " On the following morning the magnitude of the victory appeared. One hundred and twenty thousand tents were still standing, notwithstanding the attempts at their destruction by the Turks : the innumerable multitude of the Orientals had disappeared ; but their spoils, their horses, their camels, their splendour loaded the ground. The King, at ten, approached Vienna. He passed through the breach, whereby, but for him, on that day the Turks would have found an entrance. At his approach, the streets were cleared of their ruins ; and the people, issuing from their cellars and their tottering houses, gazed with enthusiasm on their deliverer. They followed him to the church of the Augustins, where, as the clergy had not arrived, the King himself chanted Te Deiim. This service was soon after performed with still greater solemnity in the Cathedral of St Stephen; the King joined with his face to the ground. It was there that the priest used the inspired words — 'There was a man sent from heaven, and his name was John.'" — Vol. iii. 50, 101. POLAND. 277 During this memorable campaign, Sobieski, who through life was a tender and affectionate husband, wrote daily to his wife. At the age of fiftj-four he had lost nothing of the tenderness and enthusiasm of his earlier years. In one of them he says — "I read all your letters, my dear and incomparable i\f aria, thrice over ; once when I receive them, once when I retire to my tent and am alone with my love, once when I sit doAvn to answer them. I beseech you, my beloved, do not rise so early ; no health can stand such exertions : if you do, you will destroy my health, and, what is worse, injure your own, which is my sole consolation in this world.'' When offered the throne of Poland, it was at first proposed tliat he should divorce liis wife, and marry the widow of the late king, to reconcile the contending faction. " I am not yet a king," said he, " and have contracted no obligations toward the nation. Let them resume their gift; I disdain the throne if it is to be purchased at such a price." It is superfluous, after these quotations, to say anything of the merits of M. Salvandy's work. It unites, in a rare degree, the qualities of philosophical thought with brilliant and vivid description ; and is one of the numerous instances of the vast superiority of the modern French Historians to most of those of whom Great Britain, in the present age, can boast. If anything could reconcile us to the march of Revolution, it is the vast development of talent which has taken place in France since her political convulsions com- menced, and the new field which their genius has opened up in historical disquisitions. On comparing the histo- rians of the two countries since the Restoration, it seems as if they were teeming with the luxuriance of a virgin soil, while we are sinking under the sterility of exhausted cultivation. Steadily resisting, as we trust we shall ever do, the fatal march of French innovation, we shall yet never be found wanting in yielding due praise to the splendour of French talent; and in the turn which political speculation has recently taken among the most elevated minds in their active metropolis, we are not without hopes that the first rays of the dawn are to be discerned which is destined to compensate to mankind for the darkness and blood of the Revolution. THE YEAR OF EE VOLUTIONS BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, Jan. 184S>] That God will visit tlie sins of the fathers upon tlie children was proclaimed to the Israelites amidst the thun- ders of Mount Sinai, and has been felt by every succeeding generation of men. But it is not now upon the third or the fourth generation that the punishment of transgression falls ; it is felt in its full bitterness by the transgressors themselves. The extension of knowledge, the diffusion of education, the art of printing, the increased rapidity of tra- velling, the long duration of peace in consequence of the exhaustion of former wars, have so accelerated the march of events, that what was slowly effected in former times, during several successive generations, by the gradual development of national passions, is now at once brought to maturity by the fervent spirit which is generally awakened, and the vehement passions which are everywhere brought into action. Everything now goes on at the gallop. There is a rail- way speed in the stirring of the mind, not less than in the movement of the bodies of men. The social and political passions have acquired such intensity, and been so widely diffused, that their inevitable results are almost immediately produced. The period of seed-time and harvest has become as short in political as it is in agricultural labour. A single year brings its appropriate fruits to maturity in the moral as in the physical world. Eighty years elapsed in Rome from the time when the political passions were first stirred by Tiberius Gracchus, before its unruly citizens were finally subdued by the art, or decimated by the cruelty of Octavius. England underwent six years of civil war and suffering. THE YEAR OF REYOLUTIOXS. 279 before the ambition and madness of the Long Parliament were expelled bj the purge of Pride, or crushed bj the sword of Cromwell : twelve years elapsed between the con- vocation of the States-General in 1789, and the extinction of the license of the French Revolution bj the arm of Napoleon. But, on this occasion, in one year, all, in the mean time at least, has been accomplished. Ere the leaves, which unfolded in spring amidst the overthrow of thrones, and the transports of revolutionists over the world, had fallen in autumn, the passions which had convulsed mankind were crushed for the time, and the triumphs of democracy were arrested. A terrible reaction had set in ; experience of suffering had done its work ; and swift as the shades of night before the rays of the ascending sun, had disappeared the ferment of revolution before the aroused indignation of the uucorrupted part of mankind. The same passions may again arise ; the same delusions again spread, as sin springs up afresh in successive generations of men ; but we know the result. They will, like the ways of the unrighteous, be again crushed. So rapid was the succession of revolutions, when the tempest assailed the world last spring, that no human power seemed capable of arresting it ; and the thoughtful looked on in mournful and impotent silence, as they would have done on the decay of nature or the ruin of the world. The Pope began the career of innovation : decrees of change issued from the Vatican ; and men beheld with amazement the prodigy of the Supreme Pontiff — the head of the Unchangeable Church — standing forth as the leader of poli- tical reform. Naples quickly caught the flame : a Sicilian revolution threatened to sever one-half of his dominions from the Neapolitan Bourbon ; and internal revolt seemed to render his authority merely nominal in his own metro- polis. Paris, the cradle in every age of new ideas, and the centre of revolutionary action, next felt the shock : a reform banquet was prepared as the signal for assembling the democratic forces ; the National Guard, as usual, failed at the decisive moment ; the King of the Barricades quailed before the power which had created him ; the Orleans dynasty was overthrown, and France delivered over to the dreams of the Socialists and the ferocity of the Red Repub- 280 THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIONS. licaus. Prussia soon shared the madness : the population of Berlin, all trained to arms, according to the custom of that country, rose against the government ; the King had not energy enough to permit his faithful troops to act ^vitli the vigour requisite to uphold the throne against such assail- ants, and the monarchy of Frederick the Great ^vas over- thrown. Austria, even, could not withstand the contagion : neither its proud nobility, nor its light-hearted sensual people, nor its colossal army, nor its centuries of glory, could maintain the throne in its moment of peril. The Emperor was weak, the citizens of Vienna were infatuated ; and an insurrection, headed by the boys at the university and the haberdashers' apprentices in the streets, overturned the imperial government, and drove the Emperor to seek refuge in the Tyrol. All Germany caught the flame : the dreams of a few hot-headed enthusiasts and professors seemed to prevail alike over the dictates of w^isdom and the lessons of experience ; and, amidst the transports of millions, the chimera of German unity seemed about to be realised by the sacrifice of all its means of independence. The balance of powder in Europe appeared irrevocably destroyed by the breaking up of its central and most impor- tant powers ; and England, in the midst of the general ruin, seemed rocking to its foundation. The Chartists were in raptures, the Irish rebels in ecstasy ; threatening meet- ings were held in every town in Great Britain ; armed clubs Avere organised in the whole south and w^est of Ireland ; revolution was openly talked of in both islands, and the close of harvest announced as the time w^hen the British empire was to be broken up, and Anglian and Hibernian republics established, in close alliance with the great parent democracy in France. Amidst such extraordinary and unprecedented convulsions, it was with difiiculty that a few courageous or far-seeing minds preserved their equilibrium ; and even those who were least disposed to despair of the fortunes of the species, could see no end to the succession of disasters with which the world was menaced but in a great exertion of the renovating powers of nature, similar to that predicted, in a similar catastrophe, for the material world, by the imagination of the poet : — THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS. 281 " Roll on, ye stars ! exult in youthful prime, Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time ! Near and more near your beaming cars approach, And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach. Flowers of the sky ! ye, too, to fate must yield, Frail as your silken sisters of the field ; Star after star from heaven's high arch shall rush, Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush ; Headlong, extinct, to one dark centre fall, And Dark, and Night, and Chaos, mingle all ; Tni, o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm, Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form, Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame, And soars and shines, another and the same." * But the destiuj of man, not less tlian that of the material w'orlcl, is balanced action and reaction, not restoration from ruin. Order is maintained in a way which the imagination of the poet could not have conceived. Even in the brief space which has elapsed since the convulsions began in Italy in January last, the reality and ceaseless action of the pre- serving laws of nature have been demonstrated. The balance is preserved in social Hfe by contending passions and inte- rests, as in the physical world by opposite forces, under circumstances when, to all human appearance, remedy is impossible and hope extinguished. The orbit of nations is traced out by the wisdom of Providence not less clearly than that of the planets ; there are centripetal and centri- fugal forces in the moral as well as in the material world. As much as the vehement passions, the selfish desires, the inexperienced zeal, the expanding energy, the rapacious indigence, the mingled virtues and vices of man, lead at stated periods to the explosions of revolution, — do the desire of tranquillity, the interests of property, the horror at cruelty, the lessons of experience, the force of religion, the bitterness of suffering, reinduce the desire of order, and restore the influence of its organ, government. If we con- template the awful force of the expansive powers which, issuing from the great mass of central heat, find vent in the fiery channels of the volcano, and have so often rent asunder the solid crust of the earth, we may well tremble to think that we stand suspended, as it were, over such an abyss, and that at no great distance beneath our feet the elements of * Dakwin, Botanic Garden. 282 THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS. universal conflagration are to be found."-' But, strong as are the expansive powers of nature, the coercive are still stronger. The ocean exists to bridle with its weight the fiery gulf; the arch of the earth has been solidly constructed by its Divine architect ; and the only traces we now discover, in most parts of this globe, of the yet raging war of the elements, are the twisted strata, which mark, as it were, the former writhings of matter in the terrible grasp of its tor- mentors ; or the splintered pinnacles of mountains, which add beauty to the landscape ; or the smiling plains, which bring happiness to the abodes of man. It is the same in the moral world. Action and reaction are the law of mind as well as matter, and the equilibrium of social life is preserved by the opposite tendency of the interests which are brought into colHsion, and the counteracting force of the passions which are successively awakened by the very convulsions which seem to menace society with dissolution. A year has not elapsed since the revolutionary earthquake began to heave in Italy — since the volcano burst forth in Paris; and how marvellous is the change which has already taken place in the state of Europe ! The star of Austria, at first defeated, and apparently about to be extinguished in Italy, is again in the ascendant. Refluent from the Mincio to the Ticino, her armies have again entered Milan ; the revolutionary usurpation of Charles Emanuel has been checked almost as soon as it commenced ; and the insurgent rabble of Lombardy and Tuscany has fled, as it was wont, before the bayonets of Germany. Radetzky has extinguished revolution in northern Italy. If it still lingers in the south of the Peninsula, it is only because the strange and tortuous policy of France and England has interfered to arrest the victorious arms of Naples on the Sicilian shores. Paris has been the theatre of a dreadful struggle, blood has flowed in torrents in its streets, slaughter unheard-of stained its pave- ments : but order has in the end prevailed over anarchy. A dynasty has been subverted, but the Red Republicans have been defeated ; more generals have perished in a conflict of three days than at Waterloo ; but the Faubourg St Antoine has been subdued, the Socialists have been overthrown, the * " Thirty-five miles below the surface of the earth, the central heat is every- where so great, that granite itself is held in fusion."— Humboldt, Cosmos, i. 273. THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIONS. 283 state of siege has been proclaimed ; and, amidst universal suffering, anguish, and Avoe, with three hundred thousand persons out of employment in Paris, and a deficit of £12,000,000 in the income of the year, the dreams of equality have disappeared in the reality of military des- potism. It is immaterial whether the head of the govern- ment is called a president, a dictator, or an emperor — whether the civic crown is worn by a Napoleon or a Cavaignac — in either case the ascendant of the army is established, and France, after a brief struggle for a constitu- tional monarchy, has terminated, like ancient Rome, in an elective military despotism. Frankfort has been disgraced by frightful atrocities. The chief seat of German unity and freedom has been stained by cruelties which find a parallel only in the inhuman usages of the American savages ; but the terrible lesson has not been read in vain. It produced a reaction over the world ; it opened the eyes of men to the real tendency and abominable iniquity of the votaries of revolution in Germany ; and to the sufferings of the martyrs of revolutionary tortures on the banks of the Maine, the subsequent overthrow of anarchy in Vienna and Berlin is in a great degree to be ascribed. They roused the vacillating cabinets of Austria and Prussia — they sharpened the swords of Windischgratz and Jel- lachich — they nerved the souls and strengthened the arms of Brandenberg and Wrangel — they awakened anew the chord of honour and loyalty in the Fatherland. The national airs have been again heard in Berlin ; Vienna has been regained after a desperate conflict ; the state of siege has been proclaimed in both capitals ; and order re-established in both monarchies, amidst an amount of private suffering and general misery — the necessary result of revolutions — which absolutely sickens the heart to contemplate. England has emerged comparatively unscathed from the strife; her time-honoured institutions have been preserved, her monarchy saved amidst the crash of nations. Queen Victoria is still upon the throne; our mixed constitution is intact; the dreams of the Chartists have been dispelled ; the rebellion of the Irish rendered ridiculous ; the loyalty of the great body of the people in Great Britain made manifest. The period of immediate danger is over; for the attack of the 284 THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIONS. populace is like tlie spring of a wild beast — if the first onset fails, the savage animal slinks away into its den. General suffering indeed prevails, industry languishes, credit is all but destroyed, a woful deficiency of exports has taken place — but that is the inevitable result of popular commotions; and we are suffering, in part at least, under the effects of the insanity of nations less free and more inexperienced than ourselves. Though last not least in the political lessons of this marvellous year, the papal government has been sub- verted — a second Rienzi has appeared in Rome ; and the Supreme Pontiff, ivho began the movement, now a fugitive from his dominions, has exhibited a memorable warning to future ages of the peril of commencing reforms in high places, and the impossibility of reconciling the Roman Catholic religion with political innovation. But let it not be imagined that, because the immediate danger is over, and because military power has, after a fierce struggle, prevailed in the principal capitals of Europe, that therefore the ultimate peril is past, and that men have only to sit down, under the shadow of their fig-tree, to cultivate the arts and enjoy the blessings of peace. Such is not the destiny of man in any, least of all in a revolutionary age. We are rather on the verge of an era similar to that deplored by the poet : — " Bella per Emathios plusquam civilia campos, Jusque datum sceleri canimus, populumque potenteni In sua victrici conversum viscex'a dextra ; Cognatasque acies ; et rupto foedera regni Certatum totis concussi ^diibus orbis, In commune nefas."* Who can tell the immeasurable extent of misery and wretchedness, of destruction of property among the rich, and ruin of industry among the poor, that must take place before the fierce passions, now so generally awakened, are allayed — before the visions of a virtuous republic by Lamar- tine, or the dreams of communism by Louis Blanc and Ledru-Rollin, or the insane ideas of the Frankfort enthu- siasts, have ceased to move mankind '? The fire they have let loose will burn fiercely for centuries ; it will alter the destiny of nations for ages ; it will neither be quenched, like ordinary flames, by water, nor subdued, like the Greek * LucAN, i. 1-6. THE YEAE OF REYOLUTIOXS. 285 fire, by yinegar : blood alone will extinguish its fury. The coming convulsions may well be prefigured from the past, as they have been recently drawn by the hand of a master : — " All around us, the world is conyulsed by the agonies of great nations ; governments, which lately seemed hkely to stand during ages, have been on a sudden shaken and overthrown. The proudest capitals of Western Europe have streamed with civil blood. All evil passions — the thirst of gain and the thirst of vengeance — the antipathy of class to class, of race to race — have broken loose from the control of divine and human laws. Fear and anxiety have clouded the faces, and depressed the hearts of milUons ; trade has been suspended, and industry paralysed ; the rich have become poor, and the poor poorer. Doctrines hostile to all sciences, to all arts, to all industry, to all domestic charity — doctrines which, if carried into effect, would in thirty years undo all that thirty centuries have done for mankind, and would make the fairest provinces of France or Germany as savage as Guiana or Patagonia — have been avowed from the tribune, and defended by the sword. Europe has been threatened with subjugation by barbarians, compared with whom the barbarians who marched under Attila or Alboin were enlightened and humane. The truest friends of the people have with deep sorrow owned, that interests more precious than any political privileges were in jeopardy, and that it might be necessary to sacrifice even liberty to save civilisation."* It is now just a year since Mr Cobden announced, to an admiring and believing audience at Manchester, that the age of warfare had ceased ; that the contests of nations had passed, hke the age of the mastodon and the mammoth ; that the steam-engine had caused the arms to drop from their hands, and the interests of free trade extinguished the rivalries of nations ; and that nothing now remained but to sell our ships of war, disband our troops, cut twenty millions off our taxation, and set ourselves unanimously to the great work of cheapening everything, and underselling foreign competitors in the market of the world. Scarcely were the words spoken, when conflicts more dire, battles more bloody, dissensions more inextinguishable than had ever arisen from * Macaulay's History of England, vol. ii. p. G69. 286 THE YEAE OF REYOLUTIOXS. tlie rivalry of kings, or the ambition of ministers, broke out in ahnost every country of Europe. The social supplanted the national passions. Within the bosom of society itself, the volcano had burst forth. It was no longer general that was matched against general, as in the wars of ^larlborough, nor nation that rose up against nation, as in those of Napo- leon. The desire of robbery, the love of dominion, the lust of conquest, the passion for plunder, were directed to domestic acquisitions. Human iniquity reappeared in worse, because less suspected and more delusive colours. Robbery assumed the guise of philanthropy ; spoliation was attempted, under colour of law ; plunder was systematically set about, by means of legislative enactments. Revolution resumed its old policy — that of rousing the passions by the language of virtue, and directing them to the purposes of vice. The original devil was expelled ; but straightway he returned with seven other devils, and the last state of the man was worse than the first. Society was armed against itself ; the devastating passions burned in its own bosom ; class rose against class, race against race, interest against interest. Capital fancied its interest was to be promoted by grinding down labour ; labour, that its rights extended to the spolia- tion of capital. A more attractive object than the reduction of a city, or the conquest of a province, was presented to indigent cupidity. Easier conquests than over rival industry were anticipated by moneyed selfishness. The spoliation of the rich at their own door — the division of the property of which they were jealous, became the dream of popular ambition ; the beating down of their own labourers by free trade, the forcible reduction of prices by a contraction of the currency— the great object of the commercial aristocracy. War reassumed its pristine ferocity. In the nineteenth century, the ruthless maxim, Vce victis! became the war-cry on both sides in the terrible civil war which burst forth in an age of general philanthropy. It may be conceived what passions must have been awakened, what terrors inspired, what indignation aroused, by such projects. But though we have seen the commencement of the e?ri of social con- flicts, is there any man now alive who is likely to see its end 1 Experience has now completely demonstrated the wisdom THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIOXS. 287 of tlie Allied Powers, who placed tlie lawful monarclis of France on the throne in 1815, and the enormous error of the Liberal party in France, which conspired with the Republicans to overthrow the Bourbon dynasty in 1830. That fatal step has bequeathed a host of evils to Europe : it has loosened the authority of government in all countries ; it has put the very existence of freedom in peril by the enormity of the calamities which it has brought in its train. All parties in France are now agreed that the period of the Restoration was the happiest, and the least corrupted, that has been known since the first Revolution. The Republi- cans of the present day tell us, with a sigh, that the average budgets of the three last years of Charles X. were 900,000,000 francs, (£36,000,000 ;) that the expenditure was raised by LouisPhilippeatoncetol500,000,000francs,(£60,000,000;) and that under the Republic it will exceed 1800,000,000 francs, (£72,000,000.) There can be no doubt of the fact; and there can be as little, that if the Red Republicans had succeeded in the insurrection of June last, the annual expen- diture would have increased to £100,000,000 — or rather, a universal spoliation of property would have ensued. Louis Blanc has given the world, in his powerful historical work, a graphic picture of the universal corruption, selfishness, and immorality, in public and private life, which pervaded France during the reign of Louis Philippe.* Though drawn by the hand of a partisan, there can be no doubt that the picture is too faithful in most of its details, and exhibits an awful proof of the effects of a successful revolution. But the misery which Louis Blanc has so ably depicted, the corruptions he has brought to light, under the revolutionary monarchy, have been multiplied fourfold by those which have prevailed during the last year in the republic established by Louis Blanc himself ! Paris, ever since the suppression of the great insurrection in June last, has been in such a state, that it is the most utter mockery to call it freedom. In truth, it is nothing but the most unmitigated military despotism. A huge statue of Liberty is placed in the National Assembly ; but at every six paces bayonets are to be seen, to remind the bystanders of the rule of the sword. " Liberte, Egalite, * Louis Blanc, Histoire de Bice Ans de Louis Philipjoe, iii. 321 et seq. 288 THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIOXS. Fraternite," meet the eje at every turn iu tlie streets ; but the Champs Eljsees, the Place de Greve, the Carrousel, and Place Vendome, are crowded with soldiers ; and the Champ de Mars is white with tents, to cover part of the 40,000 regular troops which form the ordinary garrison of Paris. Universal freedom of discussion has been proclaimed by the constitution ; but dozens of journals have been suppressed by the authority of the dictator ; and imprison- ment notoriously hangs over the head of every one who indulges in the freedom of discussion, which in England and America is universal. The state of siege has been raised, after having continued four months ; but the military pre- parations for another siege continue with unabated vigour on both sides. The constitution has been adopted by a great majority in the Assembly ; but the forts are all armed, and prepared to rain down the tempest of death on the devoted city. Universal suffrage is established ; but menacing crowds are in the streets, threatening any one who votes asainst their favourite candidates. The Faubouro; St Antoine, during the late election, was in a frightful state of agitation ; infantry, cavalry, and artillery, were traversing the streets in all directions ; and conflicts not less bloody than those of June last were anticipated in the struggle for the Presidency, and prevented only by the presence of ninety thousand soldiers in the capital : a force greater than that which fought on either side at Austerlitz or Jena. It is evident that republican institutions, in such a state of society, are a mere name ; and that supreme despotic power is really invested in France, as in ancient Rome under the emperors, in the nominee of. a victorious body of soldiery. The Praetorian guards will dispose of the French as they did of the Roman diadem ; and ere long, gratuities to the troops will perhaps be the passport to power in Paris, as they were in the Eternal City. Nor have the social evils, which in France have followed in the wake of successful revolution, been less deplorable than the entire destruction of the rights of freemen and security of property which has ensued. To show that this statement is not overcharged, we extract from a noted Liberal journal of Paris, La Reforme, of November 1 7, 1848, the followinir statement : — THE YEAR OF REYOLUTIOXS. 289 " Property, manufactures, and commerce are utterly destroyed in Paris. Of the population of that great city, the capital of France, there are 300,000 individuals wanting the necessaries of life. One half at least of these earned from 3f. to of. a day previous to the revolution, and occupied a number of houses in the faubourgs. The proprietors of those houses, receiving no rent, and having taxes and other charges to pay, are reduced to nearly as deep distress as their tenants. In the centre of Paris, the same distress exists under another form. The large and sumptuous apartments of the fashion- able quarters were occupied before the revolution by wealthy proprietors, or by persons holding lucrative employments in the public offices, or by extensive manufacturers ; but nearly all those have disappeared, and the few Avho remain have insisted upon such a reduction of rent that the proprietor does not receive one-half of the amount to which he is entitled. Should a proprietor of house property endeavour to raise a sum of money by a first mortgage, to defray his most urgent expenses, he finds it impossible to do so, even at a most exorbitant rate of interest. Those who possess ready money refuse to part with it, either through fear, or because they expect to purchase house property when it must be sold at 50 per cent less than the value."— Za Reforme, Xovember 17, 1848. It is certainly a most remarkable thing, in the history of the aberrations of the human mind, that a system of policy ^vhich has produced, and is producing, such disastrous results — and, above all, which is inflicting such deadly and irreparable wounds on the interests of the poor and the cause of freedom throughout the world — should liave been, during the last eighteen years, the object of unceasing eulogy by the Liberal party on both sides of the Channel ; and that the present disastrous state of affairs, both in this country and on the Continent, is nothing more than the natural and inevitable result of the principles which that party has every- where laboured to estabHsh. The revolution of 1830 was hailed with enthusiasm in this country by the whole Liberal party : the Irish are not more enamoured now of the revo- lution of 1848, than the Whigs were, eighteen years ago, of that of 1830. The Liberal Government of England did all in their power to spread far and wide the glorious example. Flanders was attacked — an EngKsh fleet and French army besieged Antwerp ; and, by a coalition of the two powers, a revolutionary throne was reared in Belgium, and the King of the Netherlands prevented from re-establishing the kingdom guaranteed to him by all the powers of Europe. The Quadruple Alliance was formed to revolutionise Spain and Portugal ; a sanguinary civil war was nourished for long in both kingdoms ; and at length, after years of fright- ful warfare, the legitimate monarch and legal order of succession were set aside in both countries ; queens were YOL. III. T 290 THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIOXS. put on the tlirones of both instead of kings ; and England enjoyed the satisfaction, for the diffusion of her rerohitionarj propagandism, of destroying the securities provided for the liberties of Europe by the treaty of Utrecht, and preparing a Spanish princess for the hand of a Bourbon prince. Not content Tvith this memorable and pohtic step, and even after the recent disasters of France were actually before their eyes, our rulers were so enamoured of revolution, that they could not refrain from encouraging it in every small state within their reach. Lord Palmerston counselled the Pope, in a too celebrated letter, to plunge into the career which has terminated so fatally for himself and for Italy. Admiral Parker long prevented the Neapolitan force from embarking for Sicily, to do there what Lord Hardinge was nearly at the same time sent to do in Ireland. We beheld the Imperial standards with complacency driven behind the Mincio ; but no sooner did Radetzky disperse the revolu- tionary army, and advance to Milan, than British and French diplomacy interfered to arrest his march, and save their revolutionary protege, the King of Piedmont, from the chastisement which his perfidious attack on Austria in the moment of her distress merited. The Ministerial journals are never weary of referring to the revolutions on the Con- tinent as the cause of all the distress which has prevailed in England, since they broke out in last spring : they forget that it was England herself which first unfurled the standard of revolution, and that, if we are suffering under its effects, it is under the effects of our own measures and policy. Strange and unaccountable as this perverted and diseased state of opinion, in a large part of the people of this country, undoubtedly is, it is easily explained when the state of society, and the channel into which political contests have run, are taken into consideration. In truth, our present errors are the direct consequence of our former wisdom ; our present weakness, of our former strength ; our present misery, of our former prosperity. In the feudal ages, and over the whole Asiatic world at the present time, the contests of parties are carried on for individuals. No change of national policy, or of the system of internal government, is contemplated on either side. It is for one prince or another prince, for one sultaun THE YEAR OF EE VOLUTIONS. 291 or anotlier sultaun, that men draw their swords. " Under which King, Bezonian ? — speak or die ! " is there the watchward of all civil conflict. It was the same in this country during the feudal ages, and down to a Tery recent period. No man in the civil wars between Stephen and Henry II., or of the Plantagenet princes, or in the Wars of the Roses, contemplated or desired any change of govern- ment or policy in the conflict in which they were engaged. The one party struck for the Red, the other for the White Rose. Great civil and social interests were at issue in the conflict ; but the people cared little or nothing for these. The contest between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians was a great feud between two clans which divided the state ; and the attachment to their chiefs was the blind devotion of the Highlanders to the Pretender. The Reformation, which first brought the dearest objects of thought and interest home to all classes, made a great change in this respect, and substituted in large proportion general questions for the adherence to particular men, or fidelity to particular families. Still, however, the old and natural instinct of the human race to attach themselves to men, not things, continued in a great degree to influence the minds of the people, and as many buckled on their armour for the man as the cause. The old Cavaliers, who periled life and lands in defence of Charles L, were as much influenced by attachment to the dignified monarch, who is immortalised in the canvass of Vandyke, as by the feelings of hereditary loyalty ; and tlie iron bands which overthrew their ranks at Marston Moor, were as devoted to Cromwell as the tenth legion to Caesar, or the Old Guard to Napoleon. In truth, such individual influences are so strongly founded in human nature, that they will continue to the end of the world, from whatever cause a contest may have arisen, as soon as it has continued for a certain time, and will always stand forth in prominent importance when a social has turned into a military conflict, and the perils and animosities of war have endeared their leaders to the soldiers on either side. The Vendeans soon became devoted to Henri Larochejaquelein, the Republicans to Napoleon; and in our own times, the great social conflict of the nine- teenth century has been determined by the fidelity of the 292 THE YEAR OF REYOLUTIOXS. Austrian soldiers to Radetzkj, of the French to Cavaignac, of the German to Windiscligratz. But in the British empire, for a century past, it has been thoroughly understood, by men of sense of all parties, that a change of dynasty is out of the question, and that there is no reform worth contending for in the state, Tvhich is not to be effected by the means which the constitution itself has provided. This conviction, long impressed upon the nation, and interwoven as it were with the very frame- work of the British mind, having come to coincide with the passions incident to party divisions in a free state, has in process of time produced the strange and tortuous policy which, for above a quarter of a century, has now been followed in this country by the Government, and lauded to the skies by the whole Liberal party on the Continent. Deprived of the watchwords of men, the parties have come to assume those of things. Organic or social change have become the war-cry of faction, instead of change of dynasty. The nation is no longer drenched with blood by armies fighting for the Red or the White Rose, by parties striving for the mastery between the Stuart and Hanover families ; but it was not less thoroughly divided by the cry of " The bill, the whole bill, and nothing but the bill," at one time, and that of " Free trade and cheap corn'' at another. Social change, alterations of policy, have thus come to be the great objects wliich divide the nation; and, as it is ever the policy of Opposition to represent the conduct of Government as erroneous, it follows, as a neces- sary consequence, that the main efforts of the party opposed to the Administration always have been, since the suppression of the rebellion in 1745, to effect, when in opposition, a change in general opinion, and, when in power, to carry that change into effect by a change of policy. The old law of nature is still in operation. Action and reaction rule mankind ; and in the efforts of parties mutually to supplant each other in power, a foundation is laid for an entire change of policy at stated periods, and an alteration, as great as from night to day, in the opinions and pohcy of the ruling party in the same state at different times. The old policy of England — that policy under which, in the words of Macaulay," " Tlie authority of laAV and the THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS. 293 security of property were found to be compatible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action never known before; under which form, the auspicious union of order and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human affairs had furnished no example ; under which our country, from a state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of umpire among European powers; under which her opulence and martial glory grew together; under which, by wise and resolute good faith, was gradually established a pubhc credit, fruitful of marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have appeared incredible ; under which a gigantic commerce gave birth to a maritime power, compared with which every other maritime power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance ; under which Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties of interest and aifection ; under which, in America, the British colonies rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms which Cortes and Pizarro added to the dominions of Charles V.; under which, in Asia, British adventurers founded an empire not less splendid, and more durable, than that of Alexander,"'" — was not the policy of any particular party or section of the community, and thence its long duration and unexampled success. It was not introduced — it grew. Like the old constitu- tion, of which it was the emanation, it arose from the wants and necessities of all classes of men during a long series of ages. It was first proclaimed in energetic terms by the vigour of Cromwell ; the cry of the national representatives for markets to native industry, of the merchants for protection to their ships, produced the Navigation Laws, and laid the foundation of the colonial empire of England. Amidst all his insouciance and folly in the drawing-room of the Duchess of Portsmouth, and the boudoirs of the Duchess of Cleveland, it was steadily pursued by Charles 11. James II. did not lose sight of this same system, amidst all his infatuation and cruelty; when directing the cam- paign of Jeffreys in the west, he was as steadily bent on upholding and extending the navy as when, amidst the thunders of war, he combated De Ruyter and Van Tromp * Macaulay's History y i. 1-2. 294 THE YEAE OF REVOLUTIOKS. on the coast of Holland. William III., Anne, and the Georges, pursued the same system. It directed the policy of Somers and Godolphin; it ruled the diplomacy of Walpole and Chatham; it guided the measures of Bute and North; it directed the genius of Pitt and Fox. It ^yas for it that iNIarlborough conquered, and Wolfe fell; that Blake combated, and Hawke destroyed; that Nelson launched the thunderbolt of war, and Wellington carried the Britisli standard to Madrid and Paris. It was the peculiar structure of the English constitution, during this century and a half of prosperity and glory, that produced so remarkable a uniformity in the objects of the national policy. These objects were pursued alike by the Republicans and the Royalists; by the Roundheads and the Cavaliers; by the Whigs, during the seventy years of their rule that followed the Revolution, and the Tories, during the sixty years that succeeded the accession of George III. The policy was that of protection to all the national interests, ivhether landed, commercial, colonial, or onanufactuiing . Under this system they all grew and prospered, alike and abreast, in the marvellous manner which the pencil of Macaulay has sketched in the opening of his History. It was hard to say whether agriculture, manufactures, colonies, or shipping throve and prospered most during that unique period. The world had never seen anything like it before : it is doubtful if it will ever see anything like it again. Under its shelter the various interests of the empire were knit together in so close a manner, that they not only all grew and prospered together, but it was universally felt that their interests were entirely dependent on each other. The toast, " The plough, the loom, and the sail," was drunk with as much enthusiasm in the farmers^ club as in the merchants' saloon. As varied as the interests with which they were charged, the policy of Government was yet perfectly steady in following out one principle — the protection of the productive classes, whether by land or water, whether at home or abroad. The Legislature represented and embodied all these interests, and carried out this policy. It gave them a stability and consistency which had never been seen in the world before. Nominally the representatives of certain THE YEAR OF REYOLTJTIOXS. 295 towns and counties in the British islands, the House of Commons gradually became really the representatives of the varied interests of the whole British empire. The nomination burghs afforded an inlet alike to native talent and to foreign interests. Gatton and Old Sarum, or similar close burghs, afforded an entrance into the Legislature, not only to the genius of Pitt and Fox, of Burke and Sheridan, but to the wealth of Jamaica, the rising energy of Canada, the aged civilisation of Hindostan. Experienced protec- tion reconciled all interests to a Government under which all prospered; mutual dependence made all sensible of the necessity of common unanimity. The statute-book and national treaties, from the Revolution in 1688 to the close of the war with Napoleon in 1815, exhibit the most decisive proof of the working of these varied, but not conflicting interests, in the national councils. If you con- template the general protection afforded to agricultm-e and the lauded interest, you would imagine the House of Commons had been entirely composed of squires. If you examine the innumerable enactments, fiscal and prohibitory, for the protection of manufactures, you would suppose it had been entirely under the government of manufacturers. If you contemplate the steady protection invariably given to the mercantile navy, you would suppose it had been chiefly directed by shipowners. If you cast your eyes on the protection constantly given by discriminating fiscal duties to colonial industry, and the vast efforts made, both by sea and land, in the field and in the cabinet, to encourage and extend our colonial dependencies, you would conclude, not only that they were represented, but that their representatives had a majority in the Legislature. The reason of this prodigy was, that all interests had, in the course of ages, and the silent effects of time, worked their way into the legislature, and all enjoyed in fair pro- portion a reasonable influence on government. Human wisdom could no more ah ante have framed such a system, than it could have framed the British constitution. By accident, or rather the good providence of God, it grew up from the wants of men during a series of generations ; and its effects appeared in this, that — except in the cases of the American war, where unfortunate circumstances produced a 296 THE YEAR OF REYOLUTIOIs^S. departure from the system ; of the Irish Celts, whom it seems impracticable to amalgamate with Saxon institutions ; and of the Scottish Highlanders, whom chivalrous honour for a short period alienated from the established gOA^ern- ment — unanimity unprecedented during the whole period pervaded the British empire. All foreign colonies were desirous to be admitted into the great protecting confederacy ; the French and Dutch planters in secret prayed for the defeat of their defenders, when the standard of St George approached their shores. The Hindoos, with heroic con- stancy, alike in prosperous and adverse fortune, maintained their fidelity : Canada stood firm during the most dangerous crisis of our history ; and the flame of loyalty burned as steadily on the banks of the St Lawrence, on the mountains of Jamaica, and on the shores of the Ganges, as in the crowded emporiums of London, or the smiling fields of Yorkshire. But there is a limit imposed by nature to all earthly things. The growth of empires is restrained, after they have reached a certain stature, by laws as certain as those which arrest that of individuals. If a state does not find the causes of its ruin in foreign disaster, it will inevitably find it in internal opinion. This arises so naturally and evidently from the constitution of the human mind, that it may be regarded as a fixed law of nature in all countries where intellectual activity has been called forth, and as one of the most powerful agents in the government, by supreme Wisdom, of human aflfairs. This principle is to be found in the tendency of original thouglit to differ from the current opinion with which it is surrounded, and of party ambition to decry the system of those by whom it is excluded from power. Universally it will be found that the greatest exertions of human intellect have been made in direct opposition to the current of general opinion ; and that public thought in one age is in general but the echo of soHtary meditation in that which has preceded it. Illustrations of this crowd on the reflecting mind from every period of history. The instances of Luther standing forth alone to shake down, Samson-like, the pillar of the corrupted Romish faith ; of Bacon's open- ing, amid all the despotism of the Aristotelian philosophy, his inductive philosophy ; of Galileo maintaining the motion of the earth even when surrounded by the terrors of the THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIOXS. 297 Italian Inquisition ; of Copernicus asserting the true system of the heavens in opposition to the belief of t^vo thousand years ; of ]\Ialthus bringing for\yarcl the paradox of the danger of human increase in opposition to the preyious general opinion of mankind ; of Voltaire combating alone the giant power of the Roman Catholic hierarchy ; of Rous- seau running a course against the whole ideas of his age — will immediately occur to every reader. Many of these great men adopted erroneous opinions, and, in consequence, did as much evil to their own or the next age as others did good; but they were all characterised by one mark. Their opinions were original, and directly adverse to pubhc opi- nion around them. The close of the nineteenth century was no exception to the general principle. Following out those doctrines of freedom from restraint of every kind, which in France had arisen from the natural resistance of men to the numerous fetters of the monarchy — and which had been brought forward by Turgot and the Economists, in the boudoirs of ^ladame Pompadour and the coteries of Paris — Adam Smith broached the principle of Free Trade, in respect to all things except grain and shipping. The first he excepted, because it was essential to national subsistence ; the second, because it was the pillar of national defence. The new philosophy was ardently embraced by the Liberal party, who, chagrined by long exclusion from office, were rejoiced to find a tangible and plausible ground whereon to attack the whole existing system of government. From them it gradually extended to nearly all the ardent part of the community, ever eager to embrace doctrines at variance with previous and vulgar belief, and not yet enlightened by experience as to the effect of the new system. It was soon discovered that for a century and a half we had been pro- ceeding on false principles. The whole policy of government since the days of Cromwell had been erroneous ; in politics, in social government, in diplomacy, in the colonies, in war, in peace, at home and abroad, we had been running bhnd- fold to destruction. True, we had become great, and glori- ous, and free under this abominable system ; true, it had been accompanied by a growth of national strength, and an amount of national happiness, unparalleled in any former age or country : but that was all by accident. Philosophy 298 THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS. had marked it with the sign of reprobation — prosperity had poured upon us by chance in the midst of universal mis- gOTernment. By all the rules of calculation we sliould hare been destroyed, though, strange to say, no symptoms of destruction had yet appeared amongst us. According to every principle of philosophy, the patient should long ago have been dead of the mortal disease under which he laboured ; the only provoking thing was, that he was still walking about in robust and florid health. Circumstances occurred at the same time, early in this century, which had the most powerful eflPect in exasperating the Opposition party throughout the country, and inducing them to embrace, universally and ardently, the new philo- sophy, which condemned in such unmeasured terms the whole system of government pursued by their antagonists. For half a century, since the long dominion of the Whigs was terminated in 1761 by George III., the Tories had been, with the exception of a few months, constantly in office. Though their system of government in religion, in social affairs, in foreign relations, was nothing but a continua- tion of tliat which the Whigs had introduced, and accordinor to which the government had been conducted from 1688 to 1760, yet, in the ardour of their zeal for the overthrow of their adversaries, the Liberal party embraced on every point the opposite side. The descendants of Lord Russell jjecame the advocates of Roman Catholic emancipation ; the fol- lowers of Marlborough and Godolphin, the partisans of submission to France ; the successors of Walpole and Chatham, the advocates of free trade and colonial neglect. These feelings, embraced from the influence of a determina- tion to find fault with Government in every particular, were worked up to the highest pitch by the glorious result of the war with France, and the apparently interminable lease of power acquired by their adversaries from the overthrow of Napoleon. That memorable event, so opposite to that which they had all so long in public predicted, so entirely the reverse of that which many had in secret wished, pro- duced a profound impression on the Whig party. Their feelings were only the more acute that, amidst the tumult of national exultation, they were forced to suppress them, and to wear the countenance of satisfaction, when the bitter- THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIONS. 299 iiess of disappointment was in their liearts. To the extreme asperity of these feelings, and the universal twist which they gave to the minds of the whole Liberal party in Great Britain, the subsequent general change in their political principles is to be ascribed ; and, in the practical application of these principles, the real cause of our present distressed condition is to be found. While one set of causes thus prepared, in the triumph of Conseryative and protective principles, the strongest possible reaction against them, and prognosticated, at no distant period, their general banishment from popular thought, another, and a not less powerful set, flowing from the same cause, gave these principles the means of acquiring a political supremacy, and ruling the government of the state. The old policy of England, it has been already observed, for a hundred and fifty years, had been to take care of the producers, and let the consumers take care of themselves. Such had been the effects of this protective policy, that, before the close of the revolutionary war, during which it received its full development, the producing classes, both in town and country, had become so rich and powerful, that it was easy to see they would ere long give a preponderance to urban over rural industry. The vast flood of agricultural riches poured for expenditure into towns ; that of the manufacturers and merchants seldom left it. The great manufacturing and mercantile places, during a century, had advanced in population tenfold, in w^ealth thirty fold. The result of this change was very curious, and in the highest degree important. Under the shadow of protection to industry in all its branches, riches, both in town and country, had increased so prodigiously, that the holders of it had acquired a prepon- derance over the classes in the state yet engaged inthe toilsome and hazardous ivorh of production. The owners of realised capital had become so numerous and weighty, from the beneficial effects of the protective system under which the country had so long flourished, that they formed an impor- tant class apart, ivhich began to hole to its separate interests. The consumers had become so numerous and affluent, that they were enabled to bid defiance to the producers. The maxim became prevalent, " Take care of the consumer, and let the producer take care of himself." Thence the 300 THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS. clamour for free trade. Having passed the labour of pro- duction, during which they, or their fathers, had strenuously supported tlie protective principles, by which they were making their money, the next thing was to support the opposite principles, by which the value of the jnade monei/ might be augmented. This was to be done by free trade and a contracted currency. Having made millions by protection, the object now was to add a half to every million by raising its value. The way to do this seemed to be by cheapening the price of every other article, and raising the price of money ; in other words, the system of cheapen- ing everything without reference to its effect on the interests of production. Parliamentary reform, for which the Whigs, disappointed by long exclusion from office, laboured strenuously, in con- junction with the commercial and moneyed classes, enriched by protection, gave them the means of carrying both objects into execution, because it made two-thirds of the House of Commons the representatives of burghs. The cry of cheap bread was seductive to all classes in towns : — to the employer, because it opened the prospect of reducing the price of labour, and to the operative, because it presented that of lowering that of provisions. To these two objects, accor- dingly, of raising the value of money and lowering the remuneration of industry, the Reform parliament, the organ of the moneyed interest and consuming classes, has, through all the changes of party, been perfectly steady. It is no wonder it has been so, for it was the first-born of those interests. Twenty years before the cry for reform convulsed the nation — in 1810 — the Bullion Committee brought for- w^ard the principle of a metallic, and, consequently, a con- tracted currency ; and they recommended its adoption in the very crisis of the war, when Wellington lay at Torres Vedras, and when the monetary crisis to which it must have led would have made us a province of France. Reform was the consequence of the change in the currency, not its cause. The whole time from 1819 to 1831, with the exception of 1824 and 1825, was one uninterrupted period of suffering. Such was the misery it produced, tliat the minds of men were prepared for any change. A chaos of unanimity was produced by a chaos of suffering. THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIOXS. 301 Thus, bj a singular and most interesting chain of causes and effects, it was the triumph of Conservative and protective principles in the latter years of the war, and the entire demonstration thus afforded of their justice and expedience, which was the immediate cause of their subsequent aban- donment, and of all the misery which has thence arisen, and with which we are still everywhere surrounded. For it at once turned all the intellectual energies of the great Liberal party to oppose, in every particular, the system by which their opponents had been glorified, and concentrated all the energies of the now powerful moneyed classes to swell, by a change of policy, the fortunes on which their consequence depended, and which had arisen from the long prevalence df the opposite system. For such is the tendency to action and reaction in all vigorous and intellectual communities, that truth itself is for long no security against their occur- rence. On the contrary, so vehement are the passions excited by a great and lasting triumph of one party, even though in the right, that the victory of truth, whether in politics or religion, is often the immediate cause of the subsequent triumph of error. The great Roman Catholic reaction against the Reformation, which Ranke has so clearly eluci- dated, and Macaulay'has so powerfully illustrated, has its exact counterpart in the great political reaction of the Whig party, of which Macaulay is himself the brightest ornament. That this is the true explanation of the strange and tortuous policy, both in domestic and foreign affairs, under which the nation has so long suffered, is apparent on the slightest survey of political affairs in the last and present century. The old principle of the English constitution, which had worked itself into existence, or grown up from the necessities of men, during a whole course of years, was, that the whole interests of the state should be represented, and that the House of Commons was the assembly in which the repre- sentatives of all those varied interests were to be found. For the admission of these varied interests, a varied system of electoral qualifications, admitting all interests, noble, mercantile, industrial, popular, landed, and colonial, was indispensable. In the old House of Commons, all these classes found a place for their representatives, and thence 302 THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS. the commercial protection it aflforclecl to industry. According to the new system, a vast majority of seats was to be allotted to one class only, the householders and shopkeepers of towns. That class was the moneyed and consuming class ; and thence the whole subsequent course of British policy, which lias been to sacrifice everything to their interests. The old maxim of government, alike with Whigs and Tories, was, that native industry of all sorts, and especially agricultural industry, was to be protected, and that foreign competition was to be admitted only in so far as was not inconsistent with this primary object. The new philosophy taught, and the modern Liberals carried into execution, a different principle. They went on the maxim that the interests of the consumers alone were to be considered ; that to cheapen everything was the great object ; and that it mattered not how severely the producers of articles suffered, provided those who purchased them were enabled to do so at a reduced rate. This policy, long lauded in abstract writings and reviews, was at length carried into execution by Sir R. Peel, by the tariff of 1842 and the free- trade measures of 1846. To protect and extend our colonial dependencies was the great object of British policy, alike with Whigs and Tories, from the time of Cromwell to the fall of Napoleon. In them it was thought our manufacturers would find a lasting and rapidly increasing market for their produce, which would, in the end, enable us equally to defy the hostility, and with- stand the rivalry of foreign states. The new school held that this was an antiquated prejudice : that colonies were a burden rather than a blessing to the mother country : that the independence of America was the greatest blessing that ever befell Great Britain : and that, provided we could buy colonial produce a little clieaper, it signified nothing though our colonies perished by the want of remuneration for their industry, or were led to revolt from exasperation at the cruel and unnatural conduct of the mother country. The navy was regarded by all our statesmen, without exception, from Cromwell to Pitt, as the main security of the British empire ; its bulwark in war ; the bridge which united its far-distant provinces during peace. To feed it with skilled seamen, the Navigation Laws were upheld even THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIOXS. 303 bj Adam Smith and the first free-traders, as the wisest enactments which were to be found in the British statute- book. But here, too, it was discovered that our ancestors had been in error ; the system under w^hich had flourished, for two centuries, the greatest nayal power that ever existed, was found to have been an entire mistake ; and, provided freights could be had ten per cent cheaper, it was of no consequence though the fleets of France and Russia blockaded the Thames and Mersey, and two-thirds of our trade was carried on in foreign bottoms. To provide a cueeexcy equal to the wants of the nation, and capable of growth in proportion to the amount of their numbers and transactions, was one main object of the old policy of Great Britain. Thence the establishment of banks in such numbers in every part of the empire, during the eighteenth century, and the introduction of the suspen- sion of the obligation to pay in gold in 1797, when the necessities of war had drained nearly all that part of the currency out of the country, and it was evident that, unless a substitute for it, in sufiicient quantities, was provided, the nation itself, and all the individuals in it, would speedily become bankrupt. The marvels of British finance, from that time till 1815, which excited the deserved astonishment of the whole world, had no efi'ect in convincing the impassioned opponents of Mr Pitt, that this was the true system adapted for that or any similar crisis. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it w^as entirely wrong. The whole philosophers and Liberal school of politicians discovered that the very opposite was the right principle ; that gold, the most variable in price, and the most evanescent because the most desired and portable of earthly things, was the only safe foundation for a currency ; that paper was w^orthless and perilous, unless in so far as it could be instantly converted into that incomparable metal ; and that, consequently, the more the precious metals were withdrawn from the country by the necessities of war, or the effects of adverse exchanges, the more the paper circulation should be contracted. If the last sovereign went out, they held it clear the last note should be drawn in. The new system was brought into practice by Sir R. Peel, by the acts of 1844 and 1845, simultaneously with a vast importation of grain under the 304 THE YEAR OF REVOLUTIONS. free- trade system — aud we know tlie consequence. We were speedily near our last sovereign and last note also. To establish a sinking fund which should secure to the nation, during peace, the means of discharging the debt contracted amidst the necessities of war, was one of the greatest objects of the old English policy, which was sup- ported with equal earnestness by i\Ir Pitt and Mr Fox, by ]\Ir Addington and Lord Henry Petty. So steadily was this admirable system adhered to through all the dangers and necessities of the war, that we had a clear sinking fund of £15,000,000 a-year, when the contest terminated in 1815, which, if kept up at that amount, from the indirect taxes from which it was levied during peace, would, beyond all question, as the loans had ceased, have discharged the whole debt by the year 1845. But the Liberals soon dis- covered that this was the greatest of all errors ; it was all a delusion ; the mathematical demonstration on which it was founded was a fallacy ; and the only wisdom was to repeal the indirect taxes from which the sinking fund was main- tained, and leave posterity to dispose of the debt as they best could, without any fund for its discharge. This system was gradually carried into effect by the successive repeal of the indirect taxes by different Administrations ; until, at length, after thirty-three years of peace, we have, instead of the surplus of fifteen millions bequeathed to us by the war, an average deficit of fifteen hundred thousand pounds ; and the debt, after the longest peace recorded in British history, has undergone scarcely any diminution. Indirect taxation was the main basis of the British finance in old times — equally when directed by the Whigs as the Tories. Direct taxes were a last and painful resource, to be reserved for a period during war when they had become absolutely unavoidable. So efficacious was this system proved to be by the event, when acting on a nation enjoying protected industry and an adequate and irremovable currency, that, before the end of the war, £72,000,000 was, amidst universal prosperity, with ease raised from eighteen millions of people in Great Britain and Ireland. This astonishing result, unparalleled in the previous history of the w^orld, had no influence in convin- cing the modern Liberals that the system which produced it THE YEAR OF EEVOLUTIONS. 305 was right. On the contrary, it left no doubt in their minds that it was entirely wrong. They introduced the opposite system ; in twenty-five years they repealed £40,000,000 of indirect taxes ; and they re-introduced the income tax as a permanent burden during peace. We see the result. The sinking fund has disappeared ; the income tax is fixed about our necks ; a deficit of from a million and a half to two millions is annually incurred ; and it is now more difficult to extract fifty-two millions annually from twenty-nine millions of souls, than, at the close of the war, it was to raise seventy-two millions from eighteen millions of inhabitants. To discourage revolution, both abroad and at home, and enable industry, in peace and tranquillity, to reap the fruits of its toil, was the grand object of the great contest which Pittas wisdom bequeathed to his successors, and Wellington's arm brought to a glorious termination. This, however, was ere long discovered to be the greatest error of all. England, it was found out, had a decided interest in promoting the cause of revolution all over the world. So enamoured did we soon become of the propagandist mania, that we pursued it in direct opposition to our plain national interests, and with the entire abrogation of our whole previous policy, for which we had engaged in the greatest and most costly wars, alike under Whig and Tory administrations. We supported revolutions in the South American States, though thereby we reduced, to a half of its former amount, the supply of the precious metals throughout the globe ; and, in consequence, increased immensely the embarrassment which a contracted paper currency had brought upon the nation. We supported revolution in Belgium, though thereby we brought the tri- color standard down to Antwerp, and surrendered to Frencli influence the barrier fortresses won by the victories of Marl- borough and Wellington. We supported it during four years of carnage and atrocity in Spain, though thereby we undid the work of our own hands in the treaty of Utrecht, sur- rendered the whole objects gained by the War of the Succes- sion, and placed the female line upon the throne, as if to invite the French princes to come and carry off' the glittering prize. We supported revolutions in Sicily and Italy, though thereby we gave such a blow to our export trade, that it YOL. HI. u 306 THE YEAE OF EEYOLUTIONS. sank £1,400,000 in the single month of List May, and above £5,000,000 m tlie course of the year 1848. To abolish the slave-trade was one of the objects which Whigs and Tories had most at heart in the latter years of the old system ; and in that great and glorious contest Pitt, Fox, and Wilberforce stood side by side. But this object, so important in its results, so interesting to humanity from its tendency to alleviate human suffering, ere long yielded to the enlightened views of modern Liberals. It was discovered that it was much more important to cheapen sugar for a time^ than to rescue the African race from perdition. Free trade in sugar was introduced, although it was demon- strated, and indeed confessed, that the effect of it would be to ruin all tlie free-labour colonies, and throw the supply of tlie world into tlie hands of the slave states. Provided, for a few years, you succeeded in reducing the average retail price of sugar a penny a pound, it was deemed of no conse- quence though we extinguished the growth of free-labour sugar, destroyed colonies in which a hundred millions of British capital were invested, and doubled the slave trade in extent, and quadrupled it in horror, throughout the globe. It had been the constant policy of the British Govern- ment, under all administrations, for above a century and a half, to endeavour to reclaim the Irish population, by intro- ducing among them colonies of English who might teach them industry, and Protestant missionaries who might reclaim them from barbarism. The Irish landlords and boroughs were the outposts of civilisation among a race of savages, the Irish Church the station of Christianity amidst the darkness of Romish slavery. So effectual was this system, and so perfectly adapted to the character of the Celtic race — capable of great things when led by others, but utterly unfit for self-government, and incapable of improve- ment when left to itself — that even in the ruthless hands of Cromwell, yet reeking with the slaughter of stormed cities, it soon spread a degree of prosperity through the country then unknown, and rarely if ever since equalled in that ill- starred land.f But the experience of the utter futility of * Observe, /or a time ! "We shall see anon what the pi'ice of sugai' will be when the English colonics are destroyed, and the slave plantations have the monopoly of the market in their hands. t " Cromwell supplied the void made by his conquering sword, by pouring in THE YEAR OF EE VOLUTIONS. 307 all attempts, during a century and a half, to leave the native Irish Celts to themselves or their own direction, had no effect whatever in convincing our modern Liberals that they were incapable of self-direction, and would only be ruined by Saxon institutions. On the contrary, it left no doubt on their minds that the absence of self-government was the sole cause of the wretchedness of the country, and that nothing was wanting but an entire participation in the pri- vileges of British subjects, to render them as industrious, prosperous, and loyal as the yeomen of Kent or Surrey. In pursuance of those principles. Catholic Emancipation was granted. The Whigs had effected one revolution in 1688, by coalescing with the whole Tories to exclude the Catho- lics from the government ; they brought about another revo- lution in 1829, by coalescing with a section of the Tories to bring them in. In furtherance of the new system, so plau- sible in theory, so dangerous in practice, of extending to all men, of all races and in all stages of political advancement, the same privileges, the Liberals successively gave the Irish the command of their boroughs, the abridgment of the Pro- testant Church, and the abolition of tithes as a burden on the tenant. They encouraged agitation, allowed treason to be openly spoken in every part of the country, and winked at monster meetings till the community was wellnigh thrown into convulsions. Meanwhile agriculture was neglected, industry disappeared, capital was scared away. The land was run out, and became unfit for anything but lazy beds of potatoes. The people became agitators, not cultivators: they were always running about to meetings, not labouring in their fields. The potato-blight fell on a country thus prepared for ruin; and the unparalleled misery of 1847, and the rebellion of 1848, were the consequence. It would be easy to carry these illustrations farther, and to trace the working of the principles we have mentioned numerous colonies of the Anglo-Saxon blood and of the Calvinistic faith. Strange to say, under that iron rule the conquered country began to wear an outward face of prosperity. Districts, which had recently been as wild as those where the first white settlers of Connecticut were contending with the Red Men, icere in a fevj years transformed into the likeness of Kent and Norfolk. New buildings, roads, and plantations were everywhere begun. The rent of estates rose fast ; and some of the English landowners began to complain that they were met in every market by the products of Ireland, and to clamour for protecting laws." — Macaulat's History, i. 130. 308 THE YEAR OF REYOLUTIOXS. through the whole modem system of government in Great Britain. Enough has been said to show that the system is neither founded on the principles contended for by the old Whigs, nor on any appreciation of, or attention to, the national interests, or the dictates of experience in any respect. It has arisen entirely from a blind desire of change, and an opposition to the old system of government, whether of Whig or Tory origin, and a selfish thirst for aggrandise- ment on the part of the moneyed and commercial classes, whom that system had elevated to riches and power. Expe- rience was not disregarded by this school of politicians ; on the contrary, it was sedulously attended to, its lessons care- fully marked. But it was considered as a beacon to be avoided, not a light to be followed. Against its conclusions the whole weight of declamation and shafts of irony were directed. It had been the m de guerre of their enemies, the standard of ]Mr Pitt's policy; therefore the opposite system was to be inscribed on their banners. It was the ruling principle of their political opponents; and, worst of all, it was the system which, though it had raised the country to power and greatness, had for twenty years excluded them- selves from power. Thence the modern system under which the nation has suffered, and is suffering, such incalculable misfortunes. It has been said, by an enlightened Whig of the old school, that " this age appears to be one in which every conceivable folly must be believed and reduced to practice before it is abandoned." It is really so ; and the reason is, it is an age in which the former system of govern- ment, founded on experience and brought about by necessity, has been supplanted by one based on a systematic and inva- riable determination to change the old system in every par- ticular. The Liberals, whether factious or moneyed, of the new school flattered themselves they were making great advances in political science, when they were merely yielding to the same spirit which made the Calvinists stand up when they prayed, because all the world before them had knelt down, and sit still during psalms because the Roman Catho- lics had stood up. But truth is great, and will prevail ; experience is its test, and is perpetually contradicting the theories of man. The year 1848 has been no exception to the maxims of Tacitus THE YEAR OF EEYOLUTIONS. 309 and Burke. Dreadful indeed in suffering, appalling in form, are the lessons which it has read to mankind ! Ten months have not elapsed, since, by a well-concerted urban tumult, seconded by the treachery of the National Guard, the throne of the Barricades was overturned in France : and what do we already see on the continent of Europe 1 Vienna peti- tioning for a continuation of the state of siege, as the only security against the tyranny of democracy; Berlin hailing with rapture the dissolution of the Assembly, and reappear- ance of the king in the capital; Milan restored to the sway of the Austrians; France seeking, in the quasi imperial crown of Prince Louis Napoleon, with 90,000 soldiers in its capital, a refuge from the insupportable evils of a demo- cratic repubHc. The year 1848 has added another to the numerous proofs which history aff'ords, that popular convul- sions, from whatever cause arising, can terminate only in the rule of the sword ; but it has taught two other lessons of incalculable importance to the present and future tranquil- lity of mankind. These are, that soldiers who in civil con- vulsions fraternise with the insurgents and violate their oaths, are the tvo?'st enemies of the people, for they inevitably induce a military despotism, which extinguishes all hopes of freedom. The other is, that the institution of a national guard is in troubled times of all others the most absurd; and that to put arms into the hands of the people, w^hen warmed by revolutionary passions, is only to light the torch of civil discord with your own hand, and give over the country to anarchy, ruin, and slavery. Nor has the year been less fruitful of civil premonitions or lessons of the last importance to the future tranquillity and prosperity of Great Britain. Numerous popular delu- sions have been dispelled during that period. The dreams of Irish ^independence have been broken ; English Char- tism has been crushed. The revolutionists see that the people of Great Britain are not disposed to yield their pro- perty to the spoiler, their throats to the murderer, their homes to the incendiary. Free trade and a fettered cur- rency have brought forth their natural fruits — national embarrassment, general suffering, popular misery. One half of the wealth of our manufacturing towns has been destroyed since the new system began. Two years of free trade and 310 THE YEAR OF EEVOLUTIOXS. a contracted currency hare undone nearly all that twenty years of protection and a sufficient currency had done. The great mercantile class have suffered so dreadfully under the effect of their own measures, that their power for good or for evil has been essentially abridged. The colossus which, for a quarter of a century, has bestrode the nation, has been shaken by the earthquake which itself had prepared. Abroad and at home, in peace and in war, delusion has brought forth suffering. The year of revolutions has been the Nixth of Thekmidor of Liberal Principles, for it has brought them to the test of experience. BKITISH HISTORY DUKING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, March 1845] No eflPort of genius or industry can make the history of England during the eighteenth century equal in interest to that of either the seventeenth or nineteenth centuries. By the eighteenth century is meant the period of it ending in 1792 : the subsequent eight years begin a new era — the era of Revolutions — which properly belongs to the nineteenth. It was essentially a period of repose. Placed midway between the great religious effort which, commencing in the middle of the sixteenth, was not closed in the British Islands till the end of the seventeenth century, and the not less vehement political struggle which began in the world with the French, or perhaps the American Revolution, and is still in uninterrupted activity, it exhibits a resting-place between the two great schisms which have distracted and distinguished modern times. It wants the ardent zeal, intrepid spirit, and enthusiastic devotion, of the former epoch, not less than the warm aspirations, fierce contests, and extravagant expecta- tions of the latter. Passion had exhausted itself ; energy was worn out by exertion ; enthusiasm damped by disap- pointment. We no longer see men nobly sacrificing them- selves for what they deemed the pubhc good ; the generous had ceased to obliterate the selfish passions ; good sense was the characteristic of the period ; a desire for repose its leading principle ; selfishness its ruling motive. It is ever so with men, when vehement passions are not awakened, and the ardour of visionary pursuit has not obliterated the desire for immediate o^ratification. Walpole's Memoirs of the Reign of George III. London : 1845. 2 vols. 312 * BRITISH HISTORY But if the eigliteenth century can never rival the eras of the Reformation and the French Revolution in heart-stirring events, animated narrative, picturesque description, generous devotion, and sanguinary ambition, it is, perhaps, superior to either in the lessons of political wisdom with which it is fraught. It is so because it exhibits on a great scale, and for a long period, the results of those changes which had been the subject of that vehement struggle in the two preceding centuries, and enables us to appreciate, by actual experience, the benefits and evils of those great alterations in civil and religious institutions, which, after so long and severe a contest, had at length come to be thoroughly established. The survey is, in some respects, disheartening, but it is instructive ; if it dispels many theories and blights much anticipation, it confirms many truths, and has established some principles which will probably never again be questioned. We are not aware that the history of the eighteenth century has ever yet been written in this spirit. It is understood now to be in the hands of learning and genius ; let us hope that equanimity and impartial judgment will preside as much as these brilliant qualities in the completion of the great undertaking. The great passion of the sixteenth century was for religious emancipation. The real evil which it was the object of the Reformation to shake off was the despotism of the Romish priesthood : the freedom for which the Reformers contended was the freedom of the human soul. The immediate object, the exciting cause, indeed, of Luther's movements, was the overthrow of the corrupt sale of indulgences, which, in the time of Leo X., had brought such scandal on the Church of Rome ; but religious freedom was the general and durable passion of the Reformation. It was the constrained uniformity of worsliip, the compulsory unity of belief, the slavish submission to authority, in the dearest concerns of existence, which was the real evil that was complained of. This want, so natural to an age of mental activity, so indis- pensable to one of advancing freedom, the satisfaction of which is as necessary as vital air to one of general intelligence, distinctly appeared in the forms of worship which the Reformers generally established when they had thrown off the authority of the Roman Pontiff. The Romish liturgies, DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 313 touching, admirable, and catholic, as great part of them are, were in general abolished ; and, in their stead, extempore prayers, often of portentous length, were used, to give each individual minister an opportunity of introducing, in every part of the sacred proceeding, his peculiar tenets. The sermon, for a similar reason, became the longest and most important part of the service. Every one knows how strongly the same lines of distinction still characterise the ultra- Reformers, who contend for the Calvinistic tenets and Presbyterian form of worship, and those more moderate partisans of the Reformation who have embraced the less violent schism of the Church of England. Political equality was, and still is, the grand aspiration of the nineteenth century. What the ardent multitudes who embraced the principles of the French Revolution desired, was equality of privilege, and universal participation in power. They saw the injustice and cruelty of their former oppressors, they felt how galhng their chains had been, and they flattered themselves that, if they could once get possession of the reins of power, they had sufi'ered too severely from their abuse to be in any danger of being led astray in the use they made of them. Abolition of rank and privilege, the opening of all careers to all, and the admission of all into the equal enjoyment of power, by means of a government resting on universal suffi'age, was the general object of ambition, and has been established for a brief period in France, Spain, Portugal, and Piedmont ; more durably in North and South America. What the results of this system of government are to be, is the great problem which is in the course of solution in the nineteenth century ; but be these results fortunate or unfortunate, it is this which constitutes the characteristic of the period, and will form the object of close and anxious attention to historians in future times. It was a principle and basis of government wholly new in human affairs. No previous republic, either in ancient or modern times, had exhibited any approach to it. The exclusion of the great body of the working class, in all the states of antiquity, from any share either in municipal or social powers, by reason of the generality of slavery — the arrangement of men in trades and crafts, through whose heads all their powers were exercised, 314 BRITISH HISTORY in the free cities of Italy and Flanders, in modern times, and in general in all the European burghs, necessarily rendered the basis of government in all former common- wealths essentially different. A democratic valley may have existed in Uri or Unterwalden, where all the citizens were equally rich in fortune, and nearly equally poor in intelli- gence ; but the example of a great community resting on universal suffrage, and a simple majority of votes, began with the year 1789. Although the proper democratic spirit existed in great strength in many of the leaders of the Great Rebellion, and its extravagances generally affected the army, and some of the powerful leaders of that convulsion, yet extension of political power was not the object of the 'national will. This is decisively proved by the fact, that when they gained the power, the people made no attempt, in any material respect, to alter the public institutions. Cromwell, doubtless, was a military usurper ; but a military usurper is only the head of a warlike republic, and he is constrained to obey the wishes of the soldiers who have elevated him to power. Neither he nor the Long Parliament made any important alterations on the lasting structure of government, though, for the time, they totally altered its practice. The law was administered on the old precedents during the whole Pro- tectorate. Tlie estates of the Malignants were put under sequestration, and many of the church lands were confiscated; but no great alteration in the foundations of government took place. Power, when the military oppression was removed, immediately returned to its former seats. The parliaments summoned by Cromwell proved so refractory, that they were in general dissolved after having sat a few days ; juries, throughout his reign, were so hostile to his government that they acquitted nearly all the state offenders brought before them; and legal prosecutions fell into disuse. Everything was done by military force ; but it never occurred to him to turn up the soil, so as to bring fresh elements into action : — he never thought of summoning a parliament resting on universal suffrage, or establishing a revolutionary tribunal, the jurors of which were nominated by that democratic assembly. So as the victorious party were allo\ved to chant hymns as they pleased, and hear long D[JIllis"G THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY. 315 sermons replete with any absurdity, and indulge in tlie freedom of the pulpit, they cared nothing for that of the press, or altering the structure of government. When Charles II. was recalled by Monk, he had only to issue writs to the counties and boroughs which had returned the Long Parliament, to obtain the most thoroughly loyal commons that ever sat in England. Although the change of government in 1688 is usually called "the Revolution,'' and although it certainly was a most decisive overthrow so far as the reigning family was concerned, yet it was by no means a revolution in the sense in which we now understand the word. It made no change in the basis of power in the state, though it altered the dynasty which sat on the throne, and for seventy years fixed the reign of power in the hands of the Whig party, who had been most instrumental in placing William and Mary on it. But the structure of government remained unchanged; or rather, it was changed only to be rendered more stable and powerful. We owe to the Revolution many of our greatest blessings ; but not the least of these has been the removal of the causes of weakness which had so often before, in English history, proved fatal to the throne. It gave us a national debt, a standing army, and a stable foreign policy. The sum annually raised by William in taxes, within five years after he obtained the throne, was triple what had been so much the subject of complaint in the time of Charles I. ; but the effect of this was to give us a firm government and steady policy. De Witt had said, in the disgi'aceful days of the alliance of Charles II. with France, that the changes of English policy had now become so frequent, that no man could rely on any system being con- tinued steadily for two years together. The Continental interests and connexions of William, and subsequently of the Hanover family, gave us a durable system of foreign policy, and imprinted, for a hundred and forty years, that steadiness in our councils, without which neither individuals nor nations ever attained either lasting fame or greatness. Nor was it the least blessing consequent upon such a change of external policy, and of the wars which it necessarily induced, that it gave Government the lasting support of a standing army, and thus prevented that ruinous prostration 316 BRITISH HISTORY of the executive before the burst of popular passion, which had so often induced the most dreadful disorders in English history. After 1688, the standing army, though incon- siderable compared with what it has since become, was always respectable, and adequate, as the result of the rebel- lions in 1715 and 1745 demonstrated, to the defence of Government against the most serious domestic dangers. That of itself was an incalculable blessing, and cheaply pur- chased by the national debt and all the bloodshed of our foreign wars. Had Charles I. possessed five thousand guards, he would at once have crushed the Great Rebellion ; and the woful oppression of the Long Parliament, which, during the eleven years that it sat, extorted £80,000,000, equal to £200,000,000 at this time, from an impoverished and bleeding nation, would have been prevented. Englishmen are not accustomed to pride themselves upon the external successes and military triumphs of the eighteenth century ; and they have been so eclipsed by those of the Revolutionary war, that they are now in a great measure thrown into the shade. Yet nothing is more certain than that it is in external success and warlike glory, that, during the seventy years which immediately succeeded the Revolu- tion, we must look for the chief rewards and best vindication of that convulsion. England then took its appropriate place as the head of the Protestant faith, the bulwark of tlie liberties of Europe. The ambition of the house of Bour- bon, which so nearly proved fatal to them in the person of Louis XIV., became the lasting object of their apprehension and resistance. The heroic steadiness of Wilham, the con- summate genius of Marlborough, the ardent spirit of Chatham, won for us the glories of the War of the Succession and of the Seven Years. Though deeply checkered, especially in the American war, with disaster, the eighteenth centmy was, upon the whole, one of external glory and national advance- ment. To their honour be it spoken, the Whigs at that period were the party who had the national glory and success at heart, and made the greatest efforts, both on the theatre of arms and of diplomacy, to promote it. The Tories were lukewarm or indifferent to national interests or lionour, averse to foreign alliances, and often willing to purchase peace by the abandonment of the chief advantages which war DURIXG THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 317 had purchased. During the Revolutionary war, the case was just the reverse — the parties mutually changed places. The Tories were the national and patriotic, the Whigs the grumbling and discontented party. Both parties, in both periods, were in reality actuated, perhaps unconsciously, by their party interests — the Whigs were patriotic and national, the Tories backward and lukewarm, when the Whigs were in powder, and derivedlustre from foreign success; the Tories were patriotic and national when they held the reins of govern- ment, and the opposite viceshad passed over to their antagonists. But if, from the external policy and foreign triumphs of the Whigs during the first sixty years of the eighteenth century, we turn to the domestic government which they established and the social ameliorations which they intro- duced, ^ye shall see much less reason to congratulate ourselves on the benefits gained by the Revolution. It is here that the great moral and poHtical lesson of the eighteenth century is to be found ; this it is which it behoves our historians to tell ; this it is wliich they have left untold. The long possession of power, after the accession of William and Mary, by the Whig party, which continued uninterrupted for seventy years, and the want of any philosophical history of the period since they were dispossessed of ofiice, have prevented the truth from being boldly told, or even generally known in this country. It is much more generally appre- ciated, however, by Continental writers, and we may rest assured the eyes of future generations will be steadily fixed on it. The danger is, that it will throw discredit on the cause both of civil and religious freedom, in the eyes of future generations in the world. Let us, in the first instance, boldly, and without seeking to disguise the truth, examine w^hat are the religious and civil eyils which have attracted the attention of mankind in Great Britain dming the eighteenth century ; and then inquire whether they are the necessary result of the Reformation and the Revolution, or have arisen from causes foreign to that of religious and civil freedom — in a word, from the usual intermixture of human selfishness and iniquity with those great convulsions. The two great evils which have disfigured the Reformed church in the British islands, since its final establishment at the Revolution, have been the endless multipHcation and 318 BRITISH HISTORY unceasing rancour of sects, and tlie palpable outgrowth of the population beyond the possibility of their gratuitous instruction in religious truth by means of the national church. The three great evils which have been felt in the political and social world in England, during the eighteenth century, are the prodigious, and in general irresistible, power of an oligarchy, the unbounded parliamentary and official corrup- tion by which their influence has been upheld, and the unprecedented spread of pauperism through the working classes of society. In these days the reality of those evils will probably not be disputed in any quarter, when we have seen the latter lead to the Reform Bill, and the great oro^anic chanfj^e of 1832, as well as keep the nation, and all serious thinkers in it, in a state of constant anxiety ; and the former rend the national church in Scotland asunder, threaten the most serious rehgious divisions in England, and in both countries permit the growth of a huge body of practical heathens in the midst of a Christian land. Were these evils the necessary and inevitable result of the Reformation and the Revolution, or have they arisen from causes foreign to these changes, and w^iich, in future times, may be detached from them % The Roman Catholic wTiters on the Continent all maintain the former opinion, and consider them as the necessary effect and just punish- ment of the great schism from the Church; which, by a natural consequence, say they, ended in civil convulsion, public immorality, and social distress. The English writers have hitherto rather avoided than grappled with the subject; they have rather denied the existence of the evils than sought to account for them. Let us consider to what cause these unquestionable evils of the eighteenth century are really to be ascribed. They know little of the human heart who expect that, in an age and country wdiere religion is at all thought of, sects and religious differences will not prevail. As well might you expect that, in a free community, political parties are to be unknown. Truth, indeed, is one and the same in all ages ; but so also is the light of the sun : yet in how many different hues, and under how many different appearances, does it manifest itself in the world ! In the smoky city, DUEING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 319 and on the clear mountain ; on the sandy desert, and in the stagnant marsh ; radiant with the Avarmth of July, or faintly piercing the gloom of December. So various are the capacities, feelings, emotions, and dispositions of men, that, on any subject which really interests them, diversity of opinion is as inevitable as difference in their countenances, stature, character, fortune, and state in the world. Hence it was that our Saviour said he came to bring not peace on earth but a sword; to divide the father from the son, to array the mother against the daughter. It will be so to the end of the world. Unity of opinion on political subjects seems to prevail under Asiatic despotism ; in religious, under the European Papacy, but nowhere else. The conclusion to be drawn from the absence of all theological disputes in a community is, not that all think alike on religion, but that none think at all. But although no rational man who knows the human heart will ever express a wish to see entire religious unity prevail in a state, or expect that this can be the case if any degree of freedom prevails, yet there can be no question that the prodigious multiplication of sects in Britain, which strikes foreigners with such astonishment, and also the immense mass of civilised heathenism which, through the whole of the eighteenth century, was growing up in the island, are mainly to be ascribed to the iniquitous confiscation of the property of the Church which took place at the Refor- mation. The proportion of the tithes of England which belongs to lay impropriators, is more considerable than that which is still in the hands of the Church ; and if to them are added the abbey and monastery lands, they would by this time have amounted to a very large annual sum, probably not less than £6,000,000 or £7,000,000 a-year. In Scot- land, it is well known, the Church lands at the Reformation were about a third of the whole landed property. They would now, therefore, have produced £1,700,000 a-year, as the entire rental is somewhat above £5,000,000. What a noble fund here existed, formed and set apart by the piety and charity of former ages, for the service of the altar and of the poor — two causes which God hath joined, and no man should put asunder ! What incalculable good would it have done, if it had been preserved sacred for its proper 320 BRITISH HISTORY destination — sacred from the corruptions, mummerj, and despotism of the Romish Church, but preserved inviolate for the support of religion, the relief of suffering, the spread of education ! What is it which blights and paralyses all the eflPorts now made, whether by individuals, voluntary associations, or the state, for the attainment of those truly godlike objects ? Is it not ever one thing, the practical impossibility of finding the requisite funds to support the institutions necessary to grapple with the evils on a scale at all commensurate to their magnitude ? The Established Church could not spread for want of funds to erect and endow churches ; meanwhile the population in the manufac- turing districts and great towns was rapidly increasing, and, in consequence, part of the people took refuge in the divi- sions of dissent, part in the oblivion of every species of reli- gion. Thence the multiphcation of sects, the spread of pauperism, the growth of civilised heathenism in the state. The poor-laws dated from the dissolution of the monasteries ; the forty-second of Elizabeth stands a durable record of the real origin of that burdensome tax. It was the appropria- tion of the funds of religion and charity to the gratification of secular rapacity which has been the cause of the chief religious and social evils under which Great Britain has ever since laboured, and it is this which still presents an invincible obstacle to all the efforts which are made for their removal. But the confiscation of the Church lands and tithes to the use of the temporal nobility was not a necessary part of the Reformation, any more than the confiscation of the estates of the Church and the emigrants was a necessary step in the progress of freedom in France. In both cases, the iniquitous spoliation was the result of human wickedness mingling with the current, and taking advantage of the generous effort for religious or civil emancipation on the part of the many, to render it the means of achieving indi- vidual robbery for behoof of the few. The Reformation might have been established in the utmost purity in Great Britain, without one shilling being diverted from the service of the Church or the maintenance of the poor, and with the preservation of a fund large enough to have provided for the permanent support of the unfortunate, and the progres- DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 321 sive extension of the Established Church, in proportion to the increase and wants of the inhabitants. In like manner, the Revolution might have been conducted to a successful, and probably bloodless termination in France, without the unutterable present misery and hopeless ultimate prostration of religion and freedom, which resulted from the confisca- tions of the Conyention, and the division of all the land in the kingdom among the peasants. In neither case are we justified in stigmatising the cause of freedom on account of the dreadful excesses which were committed by the selfish who joined in its support ; but in both we must acknowledge the iuipartial justice of Providence, which has made the iniquity of men work out their own appropriate and well- deserved punishments, and has made it to descend to the third and fourth generations from those who committed or permitted the deeds of injustice. The power of the oligarchy, which resulted from the Revolution of 1688, and the unbounded corruption by which, for seventy years afterwards, their power was main- tained, has been less the subject of observation or censure by subsequent writers, for the very obvious reason that the popular party, who had gained the victory at the Revolu- tion, were during all that period in power, and they have been in no hurry to expose or decry these degrading, but to them most profitable, abuses. It is probable that they never would have been brought to light at all, but would have quietly and irrevocably sapped the foundations of the Bri- tish character and of British greatness, had it not been that, fortunately for the country, tlie incubus of corrupting Whig aristocracy was thrown off by George III. and Lord Bute in 1761, and cast down by the same monarch and Mr Pitt in 1784 ; and, in their rage and disappointment, they exposed, when practised by their opponents, the well-known, and, to them, long profitable abuses by which the Govern- ment since the Revolution had been carried on. It is the revelations on this subject which have recently issued from the press which have cast so broad, and, to the philosophic historian, so important a light on the history of the first two-thirds of tlie eighteenth century ; and among them, the letters and memoirs of Horace Walpole occupy a distin- guished place. Certainly it was far from the intention of VOL. III. X 322 BEITISH HISTOEY that able aud witty annalist to illustrate tlie unbounded abuses so long practised by Sir Robert Walpole and the Whigs who preceded him, or the vast blessings conferred upon the country by George III. and Lord Bute, who first broke through the degrading spell. We have heard little of this yiew'of the subject from the able and learned Whigs who have reviewed his works. Yet it lies on the very sur- face of things, and little need be said, and still less learned, to show that it is there that the turning-point and great political moral of the history of England, during the eight- eenth century, is to be found. The truth on this subject could not so long have been kept out of view, had it not been that, till very recently, no historian at all worthy of the name has approached the subject of EngUsh history during the eighteenth century. The immortal work of Hume, as all the world knows, comes down only to the Revolution of 1688; and of the subse- quent period, down to that when his history was written, in 1760, he has told us only that the monopoly of offices, places, and opniions, by the dominant Whig party, had been so close and uninterrupted, that it had wellnigh rendered it impossible to arrive at the truth on the subject. Smollett, whose continuation of Hume is to be seen in every bookseller's window beside its great predecessor, is w^holly unworthy of the honourable place which chance, and the neglect of others, have hitherto assigned it. Admirable as a novelist — at least as that character was understood in those days — graphic, entertaining, humorous — Smollett had none of the qualities necessary for a historian. He was neither a soldier nor an orator, a poet nor a philosopher. The campaigns of jMarlborough, the eloquence of Chatham, were alike lost upon him. He was neither warmed by the victory of Blenheim nor the death of Wolfe : the adventures of Charles Edward, and the disasters of Saratoga, were narrated with the same imper- turbable phlegm. As to philosophic views of the progress of society, or the social and political effects of the Revolution of 1688 and the Reformation, the thing was out of the question : it belonged neither to his age nor character to dream of anything of the kind. He was, in his history at least, a mere bookseller's hack, wlio compiled a very dull DUEING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 323 and uninteresting work from the information, scanty during his period, which the Annual Register and Parliamentary Historij afforded. If a greater annalist than he do not arise to do justice to his merits, tlie fame even of Marl- borough will never descend, at least in its full proportions, to future generations. It is deeply to be regretted that Sir James INIackintosh did not complete his long-cherished design of continuing Hume's history. No man, since Hume's time, possessed so many qualifications for the undertaking. To an incompar- able talent for depicting character, and a luminous philoso- phic mind, he joined great erudition, extensive knowledge, and a practical acquaintance both with statesmen and ordinary life. Though he was a party man, and had early taken, in his Vindicice Gallicce, a decided part against Burke in apology of the French Revohition, yet he possessed great candour of mind and had magnanimity enough, in maturer years, to admit that he had been far led astray in early life by the inexperience and ardour of youth. When a man possesses tliis equanimity and justice of mind, it is wholly immaterial to what political party he belongs, and with what preconceived opinions he under- takes the task of narrating events. Truth will shine out in every page — justice will preside over every decision — facts will inevitably lead to the correct conclusion. It is perverted genius, skilful partisanship, imagination brought to the aid of party, and learning dedicated to the support of delusion, which is really to be dreaded. Mackintosh's mind was essentially philosophical : this appears in every page of his Life by his sons — one of the most interesting pieces of biography in the English language. His characters of statesmen, orators, and poets, in England during the eighteenth century, chiefly written at Bombay, or during the voyage home, are perhaps unparalleled in our language for justice and felicity. They show how richly stored his mind was; how correctly his taste had been formed on the best models ; how vast a stock of images, comparisons, and associations, he brought to bear on the events and characters which he passed in survey. He had not a poetical mind, and was destitute of a pictorial eye. His history, therefore, never would have been adorned by those moving scenes, 324 BRITISH HISTORY those graphic pictures, ^yhich are the life and soul of the highest style of history, and which have giyen immortality to the writings of Livy, Sallust, and Tacitus. But the eighteenth century, though by no means destitute of events calling for such imaginative powers, has perhaps less of them than any equal period in English history. What is mainly required for it is a philosophic mind, to appreciate the effects of the great convulsions of the preceding century, and an impartial judgment, to discern the causes which were preparing the still more terrible catastrophe of the nineteenth. jNIackintosh possessed these great and valuable qualities in a very high degree; and his history, if he had succeeded in completing it, would unquestionably have taken its place with those of Hume, Robertson, and Gibbon. The thing really to be lamented is, that the time which Providence allotted to him, and which was amply sufficient for the completion even of so great an undertaking, was wasted amidst the attractions and frivolity of high London society; and that, more even than the heroic Swede in captivity, he was '' Condemn'd a needy suppliant to wait, While ladies interpose, and slaves debate." Lord ]\Iahon has conferred essential obligations on EngKsh history. He has brought to the annals of the British empire during the eighteenth century, qualities nearly the reverse of those of Mackintosh, but which are, nevertheless, not less essential than those of the Scotch philosopher, for a right appreciation and correct delineation of the period. He is a scholar, a gentleman, and a man of the world. Possessed of great knowledge of his subject, vigorous application, and a classical turn of expression, he has united to tliese qualities those, in historical writers, still rarer, of a practical acquaintance with statesmen, both in Parliament and private life, and a thorough knowledge of tlie leading public cliaracters, both military, hterary, and dignified, of his own time. Every one must see what valuable qualities these are, for a correct appreciation and faithful narrative of the history of England during the eighteenth century — greiit part of which was not distin- guished by any entliusiasm or impulse in the public mind, and during which the springs of events were to be DUEIXG THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 325 found ratlier in the intrigues of the court, the coteries of the nobility, or the cabals of Parliament, than in any great movements of the people, or mighty heaves of the human mind. In truth, no one but a person moving in the sphere and possessed of the connexions which Lord ^lahon enjoys, could either obtain the knowledge, or understand the real springs of events, during a great part of the period he has embraced in his work. But still the history of the eighteenth century remains to be written. Lord Mahon has remarkable talents as a biographer ; his account of the Rebellion in 1745, and subsequent adventures of Charles Edward, is not surpassed in interest by anything in the English language, and is justly referred to by Sismondi, in his History of France, as by far the best account of tliat interesting episode in British history. But his History of England is " Memoires pour servir a I'histoire," rather than history itself We want in his pages the general views drawn from particular facts, the conclusions appli- cable to all ages, which mark the philosophic historian. His volumes will always occupy a clistinguished place in English literature, and will prove of essential service to every succeeding writer who may undertake to treat of the period which they embrace; but the mantle of Hume is destined to fall on other shoulders. Walpole's correspondence and memoirs, in many respects, are higlily valuable, and will always be referred to, as throwing much important light on the parliamentary and court transactions of the middle of the eighteenth century. They develop much that was known to no other man, at least to no other with whose writings we are yet acquainted, who has left any record of his information to future times. In tliis respect his memoirs are invaluable. It is astonish- ing how much information there is afloat in the higher political circles, in every age, which is generally known at the time to all who frequent them, which, on that very account, perishes altogether with that generation. No one thinks of committing it to paper any more than he does the stages to London, or the names of the months in the year, or the usual forms of society — because every one knows them. Thus the information, often of essential value to future historians, perishes like the beauty of the 326 BRITISH HISTORY women which has adorned the age, unless some garrulous gossip in his correspondence or memoirs has been trifling enouofh for his own as^e, and wise enouo-h for the next, to commit it to paper. Horace Walpole was that garrulous gossip. His correspondence with Sir H. Mann, embracing altogether a period of twenty years, which had previously been published, and his Memoirs of the Reign of George III., which have recently appeared, contain an account, tinged no doubt by strong party feelings, but still an account of a very long and important period of English history; and abound not only in curious facts, interesting to the antiquary or the biographer, but contain many important revelations of essen- tial value to the national or general historian of the period. The praise of these volumes, however, must be taken with much alloy. Horace Walpole was a man of the world and a courtier ; he had quick natural parts and much acquired discernment. He was a good scholar, was fond of antiquities, and a passionate admirer of curiosities, which he collected with indefatigable industry, and no small success, from every quarter. He had lived too long in the political and the great world not to have learned its selfishness and appreci- ated its heartlessness ; not to have become acquainted with many political secrets, and seen enough of political baseness. He had considerable powers of observation, and occasionally makes a profound remark, especially on the selfish tendencies and the secret springs of the human heart. His characters are all drawn from the life ; and often with great power both of observation and expression. But he had not sufii- cient steadiness of tliought or purpose to achieve anything considerable, or draw any important conclusions even from the multifarious information of which he was master, or the powers of observation which he possessed. There was nothing grand or generous in his composition. No elevated thouglits, no lofty aspirations, no patriotic resolves, are visible in his writings. Pohtical insouciance was his pre- vailing habitude of mind; an invincible tendency to ''laissez aller" the basis of his character. But he did not lie by and observe events, like Metternich and Talleyrand, to become embued with their tendency, and ultimately gain the mastery of them ; he let them take their course, and in reality cared very little for the result. He was an epicurean, not a stoic, DUEING THE EIGHTEENTH CEXTCRY. 327 in politics. His character approaches very nearly to that which common report has assigned to Lord iMelbourne. He had strong party attachments, and still stronger party antipathies ; he seems to have devoutly swallowed the creed so common to party men of every age, that all those on his side were noble and virtuous, and all those against him base and selfish. He had much of the wit of Erasmus, but he had also a full share of his aversion to martyrdom. But we shall find abundance of patriotic declamation, cutting invective, and querulous complaint. The misfortune is, that the declamation is always against the triumph of the Tories ; the invective against the astuteness of Lord Bute ; the com- plaint against the disunion of the Whig leaders, or the Tory influences at court. There is a class of readers considerable among men, numerous among women, in whom the appetite for scandal is so strong that it altogether overleaps the bounds of time and faction, and seizes with nearly as much avidity on the private gossip of the past as of the present age. With such persons, the next best thing to discovering a faux pas among their acquaintances, is to hear of it among their grand- mothers ; the greatest comfort, next to laying bare political baseness in their rulers, is to discover it in the government which ruled their fathers. We confess we do not belong to this class. We have little taste for scandal, either in the male or female great world. We see so much of selfishness, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness around us, that their details have not only entirely lost the charm of novelty, but become absolutely sickening by repetition. To such readers the first volume of Wraxall's Memoirs must be a precious morsel. We never doubted that the anecdotes he told were in the main true, from the moment we saw the Quarterly and Edinhurgh Reviews combined in running him down. Nothing but truth could have produced so por- tentous an alliance. They combined in saying that Avhat he said was a libel. Doubtless they were right, upon the principle that the greater the truth the greater the libel. To such readers we would strongly recommend the Memoirs and Correspondence of Walpole. They will find a mass of scandal adequate to satiate the most voracious appetite; 328 BRITISH HISTORY evidence of general corruption sufficient to satisfy tlie most vehement political opponent. It is in the evidence ^vhich these volumes afford of the general corruption of Great Britain during the greater part of the eighteenth century that, in our humble opinion, the most valuable lesson of political wisdom is to be found which that period conveys. We rise from the long series of liis amusing volumes with the firm conviction that in his days all parties were base, and all statesmen in a certain sense corrupt. They absolutely render the common story credible, that during the days of Sir R. Walpole, when the members of Parliament were invited to dine with the prime-minister, each found a £500 bank-note under his napkin when he took it off his plate at dinner. At any rate the long, and in many respects beneficent, reign of that veteran statesman was maintained entirely by patronage and corruption. Horace Walpole himself tells us that it was commonly said, at the accession of George III. in 1761, that the country was governed by two hundred noblemen, who received more from the Government than they gave to it. The influence of these two hundred noblemen in their respective counties or boroughs was maintained by the most unsparing use, sometimes of actual bribery, always of Government patron- age, to secure the adherence of every political partisan, even of the very lowest grade. With truth it might be said of England at that time, as it was of France before the Revo- lution, that " no one was so great as to be beyond the hatred of a minister, nor so little as to escape the notice of a comp- troller of excise." Every office in the state, from the prime - minister down to the humblest einploi/e in the post-office or customs, was conferred to secure the fidelity of political supporters. Liberahty to opponents, the public good, fair dealing, the claims of long service to the country, destitution, charity, noble descent, patriotic conduct, were alike scouted, and by common consent banished from the consideration of public men. Political support was the one thing needful ; and to secure it nothing was grudged, without it nothing was to be got. Johnson's well-known definition of an exciseman shows the profound indignation which this uni- versal and unsparing system of corruption excited among DUEING THE EIGHTEEXTH CEXTURY. 329 the few resolute and generous spirits wliicli its long continu- ance had left in the country. We heard nothing of the evils of this system from the Whigs during the seventy years subsequent to the Revolution, when it was practised by themselves ; but we have heard enough of it from them since that time, when the state machine they had erected has been worked by their opponents. The Emperor Nicholas said to the Marquis Custine, with much bitterness and some truth — " I can understand a democracy, where the popular voice is everything, and the magistrates implicitly obey its mandates. I can understand a despotism, where the monarch's voice is everything, and the people merely obey his commands. But a constitutional monarchy, where the people are mocked by a show of liberty which they do not possess, and bribed into submission by corruption, by which they are really degraded — that I do not understand, and I hope in God never again to see it. I had enough of it in the government of Poland." Amidst all the blessings of a limited and representative monarchy, which no one who surveys the mighty empire of Great Britain can dispute, there is, it must be confessed, some truth in this caustic remark. Walpole has told us of the astonishing extent to which corruption was carried in his day by Lord Bute and the Tories, who got possession of the corrupting government in 1761, which the Whigs had been constructing since 1688. The untoward issue of the war, which terminated in 1749 in the peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, the disgraceful commencement of the Seven Years' War, unjustly expiated by the blood of Byng, gloriously redeemed by the genius of Chatham ; the disasters of the American contest ; the frequent defeats of the first years of the Revo- lutionary war, afford decisive evidence how deeply this degrading and corrupting system had entered into the vitals of the nation during the eighteenth century. Every one knows that America was lost in consequence of the imbe- cility and selfish views of the commanders, whom the corrupt system of government in Great Britain had raised to the head of afikirs. On several occasions they might, with a little energy, have terminated the war with glory to them- selves and their country. The disasters of Flanders in 1 793 and 1794 were in a great measure owing to the same cause. 330 BRITISH HISTOEY During peace influential imbecility is constantly rising to the head of affairs, and the consequences immediately appear on the first breaking out of hostilities. Nothing but the pressure and disasters of war can drive Government out of the inveterate vice of purchasing parliamentary support by the promotion of incapable and improper persons. The Whigs, since they were expelled from the helm of affkirs in 1761, have been constantly declaiming against this system, which tliey themselves had introduced and matured during the preceding seventy years ; and the clamour they raised at last became so violent that it brought about the great organic change of 1832. But no sooner were they again seated in power than the same system was not only pursued by them, but extended : patronage was augmented in every possible way ; a new machine for influence, adapted to the time — that of commissions — was introduced and largely worked, and promotions in every department were rigidly confined to political partisans. It has been a frequent sub- ject of complaint against the Tory government, both before the Revolution in 1832, and on their return to power in 1841, that they were too liberal to their opponents, and forgetful of their friends, in the dispensing of the public patronage ; and we have only to take up the Red Book to see that this praise or imputation justly belongs to them. But no man alive ever heard of a Whig, during the ten years they were in power, being accused of giving anything to a Tory. The saying, which had passed into a proverb during that period, that " the Whigs could do with impunity many things to which the Tories could never set their faces,'' proves how rapidly this degrading system of official corrup- tion was again spreading, during the Whig tenure of power, in domestic government. The disasters of Affghanistan, the shaking of our power in India, the abortive first two years' hostihties with China, show with what dreadful danger it was attended to our external power, and even national existence. We have said that it is the decisive mark of a party writer to ascribe pohtical and private vices to his opponents, from which he represents his own side as exempt ; and we have immediately afterwards said, that the wide-spread corruption, and constant promotion of influential imbecility, DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 331 which, ever since 1688, has been the bane of Great Britain, and the chief, if not the sole, cause of all the disasters we have undergone, and of nine-tenths of the debts we have contracted, is mainly to be ascribed to the Whigs, who, during the long period of seventy years, immediately subse- quent to the Revolution, were exclusively in power, and had the entire moulding of the constitution, both in church and state, in their hands. Having taken the mote out of our neighbour's eye, we proceed to take the beam out of our own. We hasten to show, that we do not ascribe greater political baseness to one party than another. We will not follow the example of Walpole, who represents Chatham, and all his Whig followers, as patriotic angels ; Bute, and all his Tory supporters, as selfish devils. We assume it as the basis of all just or rational historical discussion, tliat, though there may be a wide and most important difi'erence in the beneficial or ruinous eff'ects with which their measures are attended, the real character, the moral purity of the motives, of men of opposite parties, in the same age, is much alike. There is, indeed, a wide difference in the virtue and public spirit of different ages, and of men in the same community under different circumstances ; but in the same age, and under the same circumstances, they are very nearly similar. The patriotism of Regulus and Fabricius was very dif- ferent from that which followed the insurrection of the Gracchi ; but Sylla and Marius, Caesar and Pompey, differed, if their real motives are considered, very little from each other. The same result would probably have followed the triumphs of either. There is no such thing as all the sheep being on one side and all the goats on another, in the same country at the same time. The proportion of good and bad men, of generous and base motives, among the Roundheads and Cavaliers, was much the same. The cabal which was framing a government of despotic power for Charles IL, was doubtless selfish and tyrannical ; but Algernon Sidney, and the whole patriots who opposed them, except Lord Russell, were quietly taking, the whole time, bribes from Louis XIV. Severity was doubtless exercised in the punishment of the leaders, some of whom were noble and high-minded men, of the Rye-House Plot ; but that 332 BRITISH HISTORY was only in retaliation of the still greater atrocities conse- quent on the fictitious Popish plots, and the perjury of Titus Gates. The Revolution of 1688 was, doubtless, brought about, as a whole, by necessity and patriotic intentions ; but Churchill proved a traitor to his benefactor and king, and betrayed his trust to promote that revolution — a crime as deep as that for which Ney justly suffered in the gardens of the Luxembourfj — and the blackness of which all the calories of iNIarlborou^h have not been able to efface. The (govern- ment of Lord Bute and Lord North was doubtless mainly based on the influence of official or parliamentary patronage, and the evils of that corruption clearly appeared in the dis- asters of the American war ; but these Tory noblemen only carried on the system invented, and brought to perfection, during the seventy years that the Whigs had enjoyed a monopoly of power. It is a first principle in politics, says Sismondi, that all classes which have not constitutionally the means of resis- tance will be oppressed. There can be no doubt that this is true ; and it is not less true, that all power which is not systematically watched will become corrupt. It is these principles which explain the universal and wide-spread cor- ruption that overran the country for a century after the Revolution ; and they point to a conclusion of the very highest importance in political science. Direct or tyrannical power, by means of the prerogative, or the simple will of the sovereign, having become impossible, in consequence of the safeguards estabhshed by the Great Rebellion and the Revolution, and the disposition to tyranny and abuse remaining the same, from the corrupt tendency of the human heart, the system of gaining a majority, both in ParHament and in the constituencies, by means of Government influence and official corruption, became the acknowledged, and pro- bably unavoidable, basis of government. During the seventy years that the Whigs were in power, they brought this system to perfection, and extended its ramifications into the remotest corners of the kingdom. A majority of the House of Peers, in the Whig interest, amply provided with emolu- ments, offices, and dignities, got possession of so many boroughs and counties, that they secured a majority in the Commons also, and crot the entire command of Government. DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTUPtY. 333 The sovereigns on the throne — men of little capacity, imperfectly acquainted with English, unable, from that cause, even to preside at the meetings of their own cabinet, and strongly opposed by an ardent and generous, because disinterested, party in the country — became mere puppets in their hands, and rendered the crown nearly destitute of all real or independent weight in the kingdom. The natural check in a free country upon this corrupt system, into which every constitutional monarchy has so strong a tendency to run, is found in the vigorous opposi- tion and incessant watchfulness of the people. It is this which has been so powerful a restraint upon the abuses of government during the last half century ; and which has now become so strong, that the common complaint is, that, in all important appointments at least, the Tory Ministry are forgetful of their fiiends, and select the persons to be appointed from the ranks of their enemies. But this sahi- tary check upon bad government did not exist during the first half of the eighteenth century ; or rather, it existed only to fan and augment the inclination, already sufficiently strong, to corrupt administration on the part of the Whig oligarchy, who had got possession of the helm. The popular party were now in power ; their leaders had the disposal of everything, and therefore not a whisper escaped their hps, as to the degrading system which was so fast spreading in the country. The Tories, who were in opposition, were a discredited and defeated party. They had got into ugly company — they had the axe impending over them. The unsuccessful result of the rebellions of 1715 and 1745 had, as is always the case, not only greatly augmented the strength of the ruling government, but it had rendered the Tories, who were in great part, and probably justly, sus- pected of a leaning to the rebels, to the last degree obnoxious to a large majority of the English people. Religious feeling combined with political antipathy and personal terror to produce this emotion. The Tories were associated, in the popular mind, with Jacobites and rebels ; with Popisli mummery and national antipathy ; with the fires of Smith- field and the defeat of Prestonpans ; with Scotch ascendency and revenge for the blood shed at Carlisle ; with breechless Highlanders and Protestant confiscation. Thus the Tories, 334 BEITISH HISTORY as a popular party, capable of exercising auj effective con- trol on the vices and corruptions of administration, were practically extinct. Meanwhile the popular party in Eng- land, steeped in corruption, and gorged with the spoils of the state, which the expensive system of government, intro- duced with the Revolution, had done so much to augment, was effectually gagged, and was enjoying its lucrative abuses in silence. This is the true explanation and real cause of the prodigious corruptions which pervaded every department of the state, and — wdiat was worse — every class in the country, during the seventy years wdiich followed the Revolu- tion, and which all but proA^d fatal to anything like patriotic spirit or pubhc virtue in England. The two powers, that of the government and the people, usually opposing each other, had come to draw in the same direction, and they raised between them a spring-tide of corruption, which well- nigh submerged the state. There can be no question that, if this degrading system of government — the necessary and never-failing result of successful revolution — had continued for a generation longer, it would have proved altogether fatal to Great Britain. But, fortunately for the country, George III. and his advisers, from the very first moment of his accession to the throne, set his face against the party w^hich had introduced and matured this system of government ; and their efforts, though after a severe struggle, were successful. This was the turn- ing-point of English history ; upon the success of that attempt the future character of the government and of the people mainly depended. It, 'for the first time since the Revolution, restored the government to its proper position — it rested it, in its ultimate effects, on Property, and put Numbers in opposition. This is the only proper basis of good government — for, without property ruling, there can be no stability in administration ; and without numbers watching, there is no security against the multiplication of abuses. The corrupt system of Sir R. Walpole, and the preceding Administrations, had arisen from the popular party — that is, numbers — having become the ruling powder, and, of course, appropriated to themselves the whole spoils of the state. Instantly their watching became equal to nothing, and every abuse was perpetrated without either exposure or DUEING THE EIGHTEENTH CEXTUEY. 335 complaint. There were uo Wilkeses nor Jimiiises to lasli the yices of Administration from 1688 to 1761, when the Whigs were in power ; though tliat was, bejond all ques- tion, the most corrupt period of English history. But they appeared fast enough, and did infinite good, as soon as the Tories got possession of the public treasury. This is tlie true secret of the unbounded corruption of the government of the Convention and Directory in France, of the rapid return to a corrupt system during the ten years of Whig power which succeeded the downfall of the Tories in 1830, and of the establishment of Louis Philippe's dynasty, now, on the basis of one hundred and thirty-eight thousand offices, which Tocqueville tells us are at the disposal of the ruling power at the Tuileries. It is not that the popular leaders are worse men, or by nature more inclined to evil, than their Conservative opponents, but that, when they are elevated into power by the result of a revolution or social convulsion, the controlling has become the ruling power ; its leaders and followers alike profit by corruption and mal-administration; and therefore there is no longer any possible restraint on abuse. It is not that the Conservative leaders are by nature better men, or more inclined to eschew evil and do good than their popular opponents ; but that, as the basis of their govern- ment is property, which necessarily is vested in compara- tively few hands, they are, of course, opposed and narrowly watched by numbers ; and thus they are deterred from doing evil, from the dread of its consequences recoiling upon them- selves. The selfish passions, in these circumstances, come to counteract each other, because they both actuate opposite parties. And this observation explains the cause of the remark by Montesquieu, which the experience of all ages has proved to be well founded, "that the most degrading despotisms recorded in history have been those which have immediately followed a successful revolution." The clearest proof of how strongly, and all but indelibly, corruption and abuses had become engrained, as it were, on the practice of the English constitution, is to be found in their long continuance and pernicious effects after the popular party had been thrown back to their proper duty of watching and checking the abuses of government, and despite the prodigious efi'orts which were made, and the vast talent 336 BRITISH HISTORY wliicli was exerted, to expose and decry it. Walpole tells us enough of the corrupt means bj Avhich Lord Bute's authority ^Yas main tamed, and of the discreditable intrigues by which succeeding Administrations were raised up and cast down. Wilkes and Junius exposed, in cutting libels, and with caustic severity, their real or supposed continuance in a subsequent part of the reign of George III. ; Burke and Fox declaimed in a voice of thunder against the vices of Lord North's administration ; and the disasters of that unto- ward period demonstrate but too clearly, that the radical vice of parliamentary influence had almost banished talent and ability from the public service. Every one knows that commissions in the army and navy were bestowed on children, as the mere price of support to Government ; and that, when the little hirelings of corruption were sent forth into the public service, they were utterly ignorant, for the most part, of even the most elementary parts of their duty. The same system continued during the early years of the Revolutionary war ; and we all know with what disastrous effects it was then attended. But the Whig orators and patriots, with all their acuteness and zeal, forgot to tell us one thing, which, however, it most behoved them to have told — and that is, that it was themselves who had formed and habituated the nation to this degrading system. They have forgot to tell us that they had the framing of the con- stitution in church and state, after the Revolution of 1688 ; that their power was, for nearly a century, entirely para- mount ; and that, if the system of government had come, during that time, to rest on corrupt influences, it was they, and they alone, who are responsible for the practical mould- ing of the constitution into such a form. No man who knows the human heart, or has had any experience, either of public characters in his own, or historic shades in any former age, will suppose that the Conserva- tive party are more inclined in their hearts to pure and virtuous administration than their popular opponents ; but, nevertheless, there can be no question that their government, generally speaking, is much more pure, and its effects far more beneficial. Decisive proof of this exists in English history during the nineteenth century. It took nearly forty years of incessant effort on the part of the Tories to eradi- DUEIXG THE EIGHTEEXTH CEXTURY. 337 cate the harvest of corruption which sprang up since 1761, from the seeds so profusely sown by their predecessors during the seventy years before that period ; and, unless they had been aided by the disasters of the American, and the perilous chances of the Revolutionary contest, it is pro- bable all their efforts would have been unsuccessful. But when, by the firmness of George III., and the talent of ]Mr Pitt, the contest for political supremacy was at an end, and government was rested on its true basis — that of property being the ruling, and numbers the controlling power — when the Tory party, freed from the influence of their old Jacobite recollections, had rallied with sincere loyalty round the throne, and the AVhigs, having lost the glittering prospect of a return to power and corruption, had been driven to seek for support in the passions of the people, what a marvellous display of pnblic virtue and strength did the empire afford ! Search the annals of the world, you will find nothing superior, few things equal, to the patriotism, public spirit, and generous devotion of the latter period of the Revolu- tionary war. Its unequalled triumphs prove this ; the biographies of its great men, which are daily issuing from the press, show from what a noble and elevated spirit these triumphs had sprung. They conquered because they were worthy to conquer. The burning patriotism of Nelson ; the prophetic courage of Pitt ; the spotless heart of Colling- wood ; the stern resolve of St Vincent ; the steady judg- ment of Eldon ; the moral firmness of Castlereagh ; the unconquerable resolution of Wellington, shine forth as the most conspicuous ornaments of this brilliant period. But these men, great as they were, did not stand alone. They were in prominent situations, and have thence acquired immortal fame ; but they were followed and supported by hundreds and thousands, animated with the same spirit, and possessing, if called forth, the same abilities. England, at that period, seemed to have reached that epoch in national life, " brief and speedily to perish," as Tacitus says, when the firmness of aristocracy had given invincible resolution, and the energy of democracy inexhaustible vigour to the state ; when we had the tenacity of nobles without their pride, and the vehemence of the people without their licen- tiousness. VOL. III. Y 338 BRITISH HISTOEY The Emperor Nicholas, therefore, judged too hastily when he condemned all free countries and constitutional monarchies as necessarily the seats of corruption. It is no wonder he thought so from the experience he had of them, and that which the greater part of such governments, in his time, had afforded. If we had judged of constitutional monarchy and the cause of freedom from the history of England from 1688 to 1763, we should have said the same. But the subsequent liistory of the British empire has revealed the real cause of these general and widespread abuses. It has shown that they arose not necessarily from the triumph of freedom, but accidentally from government, in consequence of that triumph, having for a long period been established on a wrong basis. The contending powers, whose opposi- tion produces equilibrium, had been brought to draw in the same direction, and thence the spring-tide of corruption. A constitutional monarchy is not necessarily based on patron- age ; it is so only when the popular party are in power. That party, having, as a whole, little or no interest in the property of the state, can be retained in obedience, and hindered from urging on the revolutionary movement, only by being well supplied with offices. It is like a beast of prey, w^hich must be constantly gorged to be kept quiet. But the holders of property need no such degrading motive to keep them steady to the cause of order. They are retained there by their own private interest ; by their deep stake in the maintenance of tranquillity ; by their desire to transmit their estates unimpaired to their descendants. They are as certain, in the general case, of supporting the cause of order, and its guardians at the helm of a state, as the passengers in a ship are of standing by the pilot and crew who are to save them from the waves. The true, the legitimate, the honourable support of a Conservative govern- ment, is to be found in that numerous class of men who have no favours to ask, who would disdain to accept any gratification, who adhere to the cause of order because it is that of peace, of religion, of themselves, and of their chil- dren. It is a sense of the strength of these bonds, a know- ledge of the independent and disinterested support which they are certain of receiving, which enables a Conservative Administration so often to neglect its supporters in the dis- DURING THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 339 tribution of the public patronage, and seek for merit and worth in the ranks of its opponents. A democratic govern- ment can never do this, because the passions and interests of the great bulk of its supporters are adverse to the preser- vation of property ; and therefore thej can be kept to their colours, and hindered from clamouring for those measures which its leaders feel to be destructive, only by the exclu- sive enjoyment and entire monopoly of all the patronage of the state. Without undervaluing, then, the effects of the Revolution of 1688 ; without discrediting the motives of many of the patriots who combined to shake off the oppressive tyranny and Romish bigotry of James II., it may safely by affirmed, that it was George III., Lord Bute, and Mr Pitt, who put the British constitution upon its right, and the only durable and beneficial basis, and worked out the Revolution itself to its appropriate and beneficent effects. This is the great and important moral of English history during the eigh- teenth century ; this is the conclusion forced on the mind by the perusal of Walpoles Memoirs, and his vehement abuse of Lord Bute and George III. for their dismissal of the Whigs from power. Doubtless, they acted from selfish motives in doing so. The king wanted to regain his prero- gative, the minister to secure his power ; but still it was, on the part of both, a step in the right direction. But for the resolute stand which they made against the Whig oligarchy — but for their wisdom in throwing themselves on the pro- perty of the nation to withstand its debasement, a domineer- ing party would have become omnipotent, the people would have been irrecoverably plunged in the slough of corruption, and the liberties of England lost for ever, according to all former experience, in the firmly established despotism con- sequent on a successful revolution. George III. said, on the first decisive parliamentary division which gave a majority to the Tories in 1761 — ''At length, then, we have a king on the throne in England." Posterity will add — At length the foundations of a free constitution were laid on a durable and practicable basis. MADAME DE STAEL [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, June 1837] A]^iiDST the deluge of new and ephemeral publications under which the press both in France and England is groaning, and the woful depravity of public taste, in all branches of literature, which in the former country has followed the Revolution of the Three Glorious Days, it is not the least important part of the duty of all those who have any share, however inconsiderable, in the direction of the objects to which public thought is to be applied, to recur from time to time to the great and standard works of a former age ; and from amidst the dazzling light of passing meteors in the lower regions of the atmosphere, to endeavour to direct the public gaze to those fixed luminaries whose radiance in the higher heavens shines, and ever will shine, in imperishable lustre. From our sense of the importance and utility of this attempt, we are not to be deterred by the common remark, that these authors are in everybody's hands ; that their works are read at school, and their names have become as household sounds. We know that many things are read at school which are forgotten at college; and many things learned at college which are unhappily and permanently discarded in later years ; and that there are many authors whose names are as household sounds, whose works for that very reason are as a strange and unknown tongue. Every one has heard of Racine and Moliere, of Bossuet and F^nelon, of Voltaire and Rousseau, of Chateaubriand and Madame de Stael, of Pascal and Rabelais. We would beg to ask even our best informed and most learned readers, with how many of their works they are really familiar ; how many of their felicitous expressions have sunk into their MADAME DE STAEL. 341 recollections ; how many of their ideas are engraven on their memory '? Others may possess more retentive memories, or more extensive reading than we do ; but we confess, when we apply such a question, even to the constant study of thirty years, we feel not a little mortified at the time which has been misapplied, and the brilliant ideas once obtained from others which have now faded from the recollection, and should rejoice much to obtain from others that retrospect of past greatness which we propose ourselves to lay before our readers. Every one now is so constantly in the habit of reading the new publications, of devouring the fresh productions of the press, that we forget the extraordinary superiority of standard works ; and are obliged to go back to the studies of our youth for that superlative enjoyment which arises from the perusal of authors, where every sentence is thought and often every word conception ; where new trains of contemplation or emotion are awakened in every page, and the volume is closed almost every minute to meditate on the novelty or justice of the reflections which arise from its study. And it is not on the first perusal of these authors that this exquisite pleasure is obtained. In the heyday of youth and strength, when imagination is ardent, and the world unknown, it is the romance of the story, or the general strain of the argument which carries the reader on, and many of the finest and most spiritual reflections are overlooked or unappreciated. But in later years, when life has been experienced, and joy and sorrow felt, when the memory is stored with recollections, and the imagination with images, it is reflection and observation which constitute the chief attraction in composition. The two great eras of French prose literature are those of Louis XIV. and the Revolution. If the former can boast of Bossuet, the latter can appeal to Chateaubriand ; if the former still shines in the purest lustre in Fenelon, the latter may boast the more fervent pages and varied genius of De Scael ; if the former is supreme in the tragic and comic muse, and can array Racine, Corneille, and Moliere, against the transient Lilliputians of the romantic school, the latter can show in the poetry and even the prose of Lamartine a condensation of feeHng, a depth of pathos and energy of 342 MADAME DE STAEL. thought, ^yhich can never be reached but in an age which has undergone the animating episodes, the heart-stirring feelings, consequent on social convulsion. In the branches of literature which depend on the relations of men to each other — his- tory, politics, historical philosophy and historical romance, the superiority of the modern school is so prodigious, that it is impossible to find a parallel to it in former days ; and even the dignified language and eagle glance of the Bishop of Meaux sink into insignificance, compared to the vast ability which, in inferior minds, experience and actual suffering have brought to bear on the investigation of public affairs. Modern writers were for long at a loss to understand the cause which had given such superior pathos, energy, and practical wisdom to the historians of antiquity ; but the French Revolution at once explained the mystery. When modern times were brought into collision with the passions and the suffering consequent on democratic ascendency and social convulsion, they were not long of feeling the truths which experience had taught to ancient times, and acquiring the power of vivid description and condensed yet fervent narrative by which the great historians of antiquity are characterised. At the head of the modern prose writers of France, we place Madame de Stael, Chateaubriand, and Guizot. The general style of the two first and the most imaginative of these writers — De Stael and Chateaubriand — is essentially different from that of Bossuet, Fenelon, and iNIassillon. We have no longer either the tlioughts, the language, or the images of these great and dignified writers. With the pompous grandeur of the Grande Monarque ; with the awful splendour of the palace, and the irresistible power of the throne ; with the superb magnificence of Versailles, its marbles, halls, and forests of statues, have passed away the train of thought by which the vices and corruption then chiefly prevalent in society were combated by these worthy soldiers of the militia of Christ. Strange to say, the ideas of that despotic age are more condemnatory of princes, more eulogistic of the people, more confirmatory of the prin- ciples which, if pushed to their legitimate consequences, lead to democracy, tlian those of the age when the sovereignty of the people was actually established. In their eloquent MADAME DE STAEL. 343 declamations the wisdom, justice, and purity of the masses are the constant subject of eulogy ; almost all social and political evils are traced to the corruptions of courts and the vices of kiogs. The applause of the people, the condemna- tion of rulers, in Telemachus, often resembles rather the frothy declamations of the Tribune in favour of the sovereign multitude, than the severe lessons addressed by a courtly prelate to the heir of a despotic throne. With a fearless courage, worthy of the highest commendation, and very different from the base adulation of modern times to the Baal of popular power, Bossuet, Massillon, and Bourdaloue incessantly rang in the ears of their courtly auditory the equality of mankind in the sight of heaven, and the awful words of judgment to come. These imaginary and Utopian effusions now excite a smile, even in the most youthful student ; and a suffering age, taught by the experienced evils of democratic ascendency, has now learned to appreciate, as they deserve, the profound and caustic sayings in which Aristotle, Sallust, and Tacitus have delivered to future ages the condensed wisdom on the instability and tyranny of the popular rule, wliich ages of calamity had brought home to the sages of antiquity. In Madame de Stael and Chateaubriand we have incom- parably more originality and variety of thought ; far more just and experienced views of human affairs ; far more con- densed wisdom, which the statesman and the philosopher may treasure in their memories, than in the great writers of the age of Louis XIV. We see at once in their productions that we are dealing with those who speak from experience of human affairs ; to whom years of suffering have brought centuries of wisdom ; and who in the stern school of adversity have learned to abjure both much of the fanciful El Dorado speculations of preceding philosophy, and the perilous effusions of succeeding republicanism. Though the one was by birth and habit an aristocrat of the ancient and now decaying school, and the other, a Liberal nursed at the feet of the great Gamaliel of the Revolution, yet there is no material difference in their political conclusions ; so com- pletely does a close observation of the progress of a revolu- tion induce the same conclusions in minds of the highest stamp, with whatever early prepossessions the survey may 344 MADAME DE STAEL. have been origiuallj commenced. Tlie Dix Annees cVExil, and the Observations on the French Revolution might have been written by Chateaubriand, and Madame de Stael would have little wherefrom to dissent in the Monarchie selon la Gharte, or the later political writings of her illus- trious rival. It is by their works of imagination, taste, and criticism, however, that these immortal writers are principally cele- brated, and it is with them that we propose to commence this critical survey. Their names are universally known — Corinne, Delphine, De V Allemacjne, the Dix Annees d'Exil, and De la Litteratw^e, are as familiar in sound, at least, to our ears, as the Genie du Ghristianisme, the Din4raire, the Martyrs, Atala et Rene, of the far travelled pilgrim of expiring feudalism are to our memories. Each has beauties of the very highest cast in this department, and yet their excellences are so various, that we know not to which to award the palm. If driven to discriminate between them, we should say that De Stael has more sentiment, Chateau- briand more imagination ; that the former has deeper knowledge of human feelings, and the latter more varied and animated pictures of human manners ; that the charm of the first consists chiefly in the just and profound views of life, its changes and emotions, with which her works abound, and the fascination of the last in the brilliant phantasmagoria of actual scenes, impressions, and events which his writings exhibit. No one can exceed Madame de Stael in the expression of the sentiment or poetry of nature, or the development of the varied and storied associations which historical scenes or monuments never fail to awaken in the cultivated mind ; but in the delineation of the actual features she exhibits, or the painting of the various and gorgeous scenery or objects she presents, she is greatly inferior to the author of the Genius of Christianity. She speaks emotion to the heart, not pictures to the eye. Chateaubriand, on the other hand, has dipped his pencil in the finest and most radiant hues of nature. With a skill surpassing even that of the Great Magician of the North, he depicts all the most splendid scenes of both hemispheres ; and, seizing with the inspiration of genius on the really characteristic features of the boundless variety of objects he MADAME DE STAEL. 345 has visited, brings tbein before us Tvitb a force and fidelity Avbicb it is impossible to surpass. After all, however, on rising from a perusal of the great works of these two authors, it is hard to saj which has left the most indelible impression on the mind ; for if the one has accumulated a store of brilliant pictures which have never jet been rivalled, the other has drawn from the objects on which she has touched all the most profound emotions which life could awaken ; and if the first leaves a gorgeous scene painted on the mind, the latter has engraved a durable impression on the heart. Gorinne is not to be regarded as a novel. Boarding- school girls and youths just fledged from college may admire it as such, and dwell with admiration on the sorrows of the heroine and the faithlessness of Lord Nelvil ; but considered in that view it has glaring faults, both in respect of fancy, probabiHty, and story, and will bear no comparison either with the great novels of Sir Walter Scott, or the secondary productions of his numerous imitators. The real view in which to regard it is as a picture of Italy ; its inhabitants, feelings, and recollections ; its cloudless skies and glassy seas ; its forest-clad hills and sunny vales ; its umbrageous groves and mouldering forms ; its heart-inspiring ruins and deathless scenes. As such, it is superior to any work on that subject which has appeared in any European language. Nowhere else shall we find so rich and glowing an inter- mixture of sentiment with description ; of deep feeling for the beauty of art, with a correct perception of its leading principles ; of historical lore with poetical fancy ; of ardour in the cause of social amelioration, with charity to the indi- viduals w^ho, under unfortunate institutions, are chained to a life of indolence and pleasure. Beneath the glowing sun and azure skies of Italy the authoress has imbibed the real modern Italian spirit ; she exhibits in the mouth of her heroine all that devotion to art, that rapturous regard to antiquity, that insouciance in ordinary life, and constant hesoin of fresh excitement by which that remarkable people are distinguished from any other at present in Europe. She paints them as they really are ; living on the recollection of the past, feeding on the glories of their double set of illustrious ancestors ; at times exulting in the recollection of the legions which sub- dued the world, at others recurring with pride to the glorious 346 MADAME DE STAEL. though brief days of modern art ; mingling the names of Caesar, Pompej, Cicero, and Virgil with those of Michael Angelo, Raphael, Buonarotti, and Correggio ; repeating with admiration the stanzas of Tasso as they glide through the deserted palaces of Venice, and storing their minds with the rich creations of Ariosto's fancy as they gaze on the stately monuments of Rome. Not less vividly has she portrayed, in the language, feel- ings, and character of her heroine, the singular intermixture with these animating recollections of all the frivolity which has rendered impossible, without a fresh impregnation of northern vigour, the regeneration of Italian society. We see in her pages, as we witness in real life, talents the most commanding, beauty the most fascinating, graces the most captivating, devoted to no other object but the excitement of a transient passion ; infidelity itself subjected to certain restraints, and boasting of its fidelity to one attachment ; whole classes of society incessantly occupied with no other object but the gratification of vanity, the thraldom of attachment, or the imperious demands of beauty, and the strongest craving of cultivated life, the hesoin dUiimer, influen- cing, for the best part of their lives, the higher classes of both sexes. No other author has painted with such force and truth the most profound passions of the human heart : none has delineated with such feeling and pathos the sentiment of love. The reason is obvious ; she described what she had herself felt. In such representation there would probably be nothing in the hands of an ordinary writer but frivo- lous, or possibly pernicious details ; but by Madame de Stael it is touched on so gently, so strongly intermingled with sentiment, and traced so naturally to its ultimate and disastrous efi*ects, that the picture becomes not merely characteristic of manners, but purifying in its tendency. The Dix Annees d'Exil, though abounding with fewer splendid and enclianting passages, is written in a different strain, and devoted more to political objects than the Italian novel. It exhibits the Imperial Government of Napoleon in the high and palmy days of his greatness ; when all the Con- tinent had bowed the neck to his power, and, from the rock of Gibraltar to the Frozen Ocean, not a voice dared to be lifted against his commands. It shows the internal tyranny MADAME DE STAEL. 347 and yexations of this formidable power ; its despicable jealousies and contemptible vanity ; its odious restrictions and tyrannising tendency. We see the censorship chaining the human mind to the night of the tenth in the opening of the nineteenth century ; the commands of the police fetter- ing every effort of independent thought and free discussion ; forty millions of men slavishly following the car of a victor, who, in exchange for all the advantages of freedom, hoped but never obtained from the Revolution, dazzled them with the glitter only of gilded chains. In her subsequent migra- tions through the Tyrol, Poland, Russia, and Sweden, to avoid his persecution during the years which preceded the Russian war, we have the noblest picture of the elevated feelings which, during this period of general oppression, were rising up in the nations which yet preserved a shadow of indepen- dence, as well as of the heroic stand made by Alexander and his brave subjects against the memorable invasion which ultimately proved their assailant's ruin. These are animat- ing themes ; and though not in general inclined to dwell on description, or enrich her work with picturesque narrative, the scenery of the North had wakened profound emotions in her heart, which appear in many touches and reflections of no ordinary sublimity. Chateaubriand addresses himself much more habitually and systematically to the eye. He paints what he has seen, whether in nature, society, manners, or art, with the graphic skill of a consummate draughtsman ; and produces the emotion he is desirous of awakening, not by direct words calculated to arouse it, but by enabling the imagination to depict to itself the objects which in nature, by their felici- tous combination, produced the impression. Madame de Stael does not paint the features of the scene, but in a few words she portrays the emotion which she experienced on beholding it, and contrives by these few words to awaken it in her readers ; Chateaubriand enumerates with a painter's power all the features of the scene, and by the vividness of description succeeds not merely in painting it on the retina of the mind, but in awakening there the precise emotion which he himself felt on beholding it. The one speaks to the heart through the eye, the other to the eye through the heart. As we travel with the illustrious pilgrim of the 348 MADAME DE STAEL. ReYolntion, we see risins: before us in successive clearness the lonely temples, and glittering valleys, and storied capes of Greece ; the desert plains and rocky ridges and sepul- chral hollows of Judea ; the solitary palms and stately monuments of Egypt ; the isolated remains of Carthage, the deep solitudes of America, the sounding cataracts, and still lakes, and boundless forests of the New World. Not less vivid is his description of human scenes and actions, of which, during his eventful career, he has seen such an extraordinary variety : the Janissary, the Tartar, the Turk ; the Bedouins of the desert places, the Numidians of the torrid zone ; the cruel Revolutionists of France ; the inde- pendent savages of America ; the ardent mind of Napoleon, the dauntless intrepidity of Pitt. Nothing can exceed the variety and brilliancy of the pictures which he leaves engraven on the imagination of his reader ; but he has neither touched the heart nor convinced the judgment like the profound hand of his female rival. To illustrate these observations, we have selected a passage from Chateaubriand's Genie du Ghristianisme, and placed beside it two of the most inspired of Madame de StaeFs passages on Roman scenery. We shall subjoin two of the most admirable descriptions by Sir Walter Scott, that the reader may at once have pre- sented to his view the masterpieces, in the descriptive line, of the three greatest authors of the age. All the passages are translated by ourselves ; we have neither translations at hand, nor inclination to mar so much eloquence by the slovenly dress in which it usually appears in an English version. " One evening, when it was a profound calm, we were sailing through those lovely seas which bathe the coast of Virginia, — all the sails were furled — I was occupied below wdien I heard the bell which called the mari- ners upon deck to prayers — I hastened to join my orisons to those of the rest of the crew. The oflicers were on the forecastle, with the passengers ; the priest, with his prayer-book in his hand, stood a little in advance ; the sailors were scattered here and there on the deck ; we were all above, with our faces turned towards the prow of the vessel, which looked to the west. " The globe of the sun, ready to plunge into the waves, appeared between the ropes of the vessel in the midst of boundless space. You would have imagined, from the balancing of the poop, that the glorious luminary changed at every instant its horizon. A few light clouds were scattered without order in the east, where the moon was slowly ascending ; all the rest of the sky was unclouded. Towards the north, forming a glorious triangle with the star of day and that of night, a glittering cloud arose from the sea, MADAME DE STAEL. 349 resplendent with the colours of the prism, like a crystal pile supporting the vault of heaven. " He is much to be pitied who could have witnessed this scene, without feeling the beauty of God. Tears involuntarily flowed from my eyes, when my companions, taking oif their hats, began to sing, in their hoarse strains, the simple hymn of Our Lady of Succour. How touching was that prayer of men, who, on a fragile plank, in the midst of the ocean, contemplated the sun setting in the midst of the waves ! How that simple invocation of the mariners to the Mother of Woes went to the heart ! The consciousness of our littleness in the sight of Infinity— our chants prolonged afar over the waves— night approaching with its sable wings— a whole crew of a vessel filled with admiration and a holy fear— God bending over the abyss, with one hand retaining the sun at the gates of the west, with the other raising the moon in the east, and yet lending an attentive ear to the voice of prayer ascending from a speck in the immensity — all combined to form an assem- blage which cannot be described, and of which the human heart could hardly bear the weight. " The scene at land was not less ravishing. One evening I had lost my way in a forest, at a short distance from the Falls of Niagara. Soon the day expired around me, and I tasted, in all its solitude, the lovely spectacle of a night in the deserts of the New World. "An hour after sunset the moon showed itself above the branches, on the opposite side of the horizon. An embalmed breeze, which the Queen of Night seemed to bring with her from the East, preceded her with its freshen- ing gales. The solitary star ascended by degrees in the heavens ; some- times she followed peaceably her azure course, sometimes she reposed on the groups of clouds, which resembled the summits of lofty mountains covered with snow. These clouds, opening and closing their sails, now spread themselves out in transparent zones of white satin, now dispersed into light bubbles of foam, or formed in the heavens bars of white so dazzling and sweet, that you could almost believe you felt their snowy surface. " The scene on the earth was of equal beauty ; the declining day, and the light of the moon, descended into the intervals of the trees, and spread a faint gleam even in the profoundest part of the darkness. The river which flowed at my feet alternately lost itself in the woods, and reappeared brilliant with the constellations of night which reposed on its bosom. In a savanna on the other side of the river, the moonbeams slept motionless on the verdant turf. A few birches, agitated by the breeze, and dispersed here and there, formed isles of floating shadow on that motionless sea of light. All would have been in profound repose, but for the fall of a few leaves, the breath of a transient breeze, and the moaning of the owl ; while, at intervals in the distance, the deep roar of Niagara was heard, which, prolonged from desert to desert in the calm of the night, expired at length in the endless solitude of the forest. " The grandeur, the surpassing melancholy of that scene, can be expressed by no human tongue — the finest nights of Europe can give no conception of it. In vain, amidst our cultivated fields, does the imagination seek to expand — it meets on all sides the habitations of men ; but in those savage regions the soul loves to shroud itself in the ocean of forests, to hang over the gulf of cataracts, to meditate on the shores of lakes and rivers, and feel itself alone as it were with God. * Prsesentiorem conspicimus Deum Fei^a per juga, clivosque prseruptos, Souautes intei' aquas nemorumque noctem.' " We doubt if any passages ever were written of more 350 MADAME DE STAEL. thrilling descriptiye eloquence than this ; hereafter we shall contrast them with some of the finest of Lamartine, which have equalled but not exceeded them. But now mark the different style with which Madame de Stael treats the heart- stirring monuments of Roman greatness. " At this moment St Peter arose to their view ; the gi'eatest edifice which man has ever raised, for the Pj-ramids themselves are of less considerable elevation, ' I would perhaps have done better,' said Corinne, ' to have taken yon to the most beautiful of our edifices last ; but that is not my system. I am convinced that, to render one alive to the charm of the fine arts, we should commence with those objects which awaken a lively and profound admiration. When once that sentiment has been experienced, a new sphere of ideas is awakened, which renders us susceptible of the impression pro- duced by beauties of an inferior order ; they revive, though in a lesser degree, the first impression which has been received. All these gradations in pro- ducing emotion are contrary to my opinion ; you do not arrive at the sublime by successive steps ; infinite degrees separate it from the beautiful.' " Oswald experienced an extraordinary emotion on arriving in front of the fapade of St Peter's. It was the first occasion on which a work of human hands produced on him the eff'ects of one of the marvels of nature. It is the only efi'ort of human industry which has the grandeur which charac- terises the immediate works of the Creator. Corinne rejoiced in the aston- ishment of Oswald. ' I have chosen,' said she, ' a day when the sun was shining in all its brilliance to behold this monument. I reserve for you a more secret, religious enjoyment, to contemplate it by the light of the moon ; but at this moment it was necessary to obtain your presence at the most brilliant of our fetes, the genius of man decorated by the magnificence of nature.' " The Place of St Peter is surrounded by columns, which appear light at a distance, but massy when seen near. The earth, which rises gently to the gate of the church, adds to the efi'ect it produces. An obelisk of eighty feet in height, which appears as nothing in presence of the cupola of St Peter's, is in the middle of the Place. The form of obelisks has something in it which is singularly pleasing to the imagination ; their summit loses itself in the clouds, and seems even to elevate to the heavens a great thought of man. That monument, which was brought from Egypt to adorn the baths of Caracalla, and which Sextus V. subsequently transported to the foot of the Temple of St Peter ; that contemporary of so many ages, which have sought in vain to decay its solid frame, inspires respect ; man feels liimself so fleeting, that he always experiences emotion in presence of that which has passed unchanged through many ages. At a little distance, on each side of the obelisk, are two fountains, the waters of which perpetually are projected up, and fall doAvn in cascades through the air. That murmur of waters, which is usually heard only in the field, produces in such a situa- tion a new sensation ; but one in harmony with that which arises from the aspect of so majestic a temple. " Painting or sculpture, imitating in general the human figure, or some object in external nature, awakens in our minds distinct and positive ideas ; but a beautiful monument of architecture has not any determinate expres- sion, and the spectator is seized, on contemplating it, with that reverie, without any definite object, which leads the thoughts so far oft\ The sound of the waters adds to these vague and profound impressions ; it is uniform, as the edifice is regular. ' Eternal movement and eternal repose ' are thus brought to combine with each other. It is here, in an especial MADAME DE STAEL. 351 manner, that Time is without power : it never dries up those sparkling streams; it never shakes those immovable pillars. The waters, which spring np in fan-like luxuriance from these fountains, are so light and so vapoury, that, in a fine day, the rays of the sun produce little rainbows of the most beautiful colour. " ' Stop a moment here,' said Corinne to Lord Nelvil, as he stood under the portico of the church ; ' pause before drawing aside the curtain which covers the entrance of the Temple. Does not your heart beat at the threshold of that sanctuary ? Do you not feel, on entering it, the emotion consequent on a solemn event ? ' At these words Corinne herself drew aside the curtain, and held it so as to let Lord Nelvil enter. Her attitude icas so beautiful in doing so, that for a moment it withdrew the eyes of her lover even from the majestic interior of the Temple. But as he advanced, its greatness burst upon his mind, and the impression which he received under its lofty arches was so profound, that the sentiment of love was for a time effaced. He walked slowly beside Corinne ; both were silent. Everything enjoined con- templation ; the slightest sound resounded so far, that no word appeared worthy of being repeated in those eternal mansions. Prayer alone, the voice of misfortune was heard at intervals in their vast vaults. And when, under those stupendous domes, you hear from afar the voice of an old man, whose trembling steps totter along those beautiful marbles, watered with so many tears, you feel that man is rendered more dignified by that very infir- mity of his nature which exposes his divine spirit to so many kinds of sufter- ing, and that Christianity, the worship of grief, contains the true secret of man's sojourn upon earth. " Corinne interrupted the reverie of Oswald, and said to him, ' You have seen the Gothic churches of England and Germany, and must have observed that they are distinguished by a much more sombre character than this cathedral. There is something mystical in the Catholicism of these North- ern people ; ours speaks to the imagination by exterior objects. Michael Angelo said, on beholding the cupola of the Pantheon, ' I will place it in the air ;' and, in truth, St Peter's is a temple raised on the basement of a church. There is a certain alliance of the ancient worship with Christianity in the eff'ect which the interior of that church produces. I often go to walk here alone, in order to restore to my mind the tranquillity it may have lost. The sight of such a monument is like a continual and fixed music, awaiting you to pour its balm into your mind, whenever you approach it ; and cer- tainly, among the many titles of this nation to glory, we must number the patience, courage, and disinterestedness of the chiefs of the Church, who consecrated, during a hundred and fifty years, such vast treasures and boundless labour to the prosecution of a work, of which none of them could hope to enjoy the fruits.' " — Corinne, vol. i. c. 3. In this magnificent passage, the words underlined are an obvious blemish. The idea of Oswald turning aside at the entrance of St Peter's from the gaze of the matchless inte- rior of the Temple, a spectacle unique in the world, to feast his eye by admiration of his inamorata^ however natural in a lover, is more than ordinary readers, in the frigid latitudes of the north, can altogether understand. But Madame de Stael was a woman, and a Frenchwoman ; and apparently she could not resist tlie opportunity of signalising the triumph of her sex, by portraying the 352 MADAME DE STAEL. superiority of female beauty to the grandest and most imposing object that the hands of man have ever reared. Abstracting from this feminine weakness, the passage is one of almost uniform beauty, and well illustrates the peculiar descriptive style of the author ; not painting objects, but touchinof the chords which cause emotions to vibrate. She has unconsciously deUneated her own style, as compared with that of Chateaubriand, in describing the different characters of the cathedrals of the North and South. — " There is something mystical in the Catholicism of the Northern people ; ours speaks to the imagination by exterior objects." As another specimen of Madame de Stael's descriptive powers, take her picture of the Appian Way, with its long lines of tombs on either side, on the southern quarter of Rome. " She conducted Lord ISTelvil beyond the gates of the city, on the ancient traces of the Appian Way. These traces are marked in the middle of the Campagna of Rome by tombs, on the right and left of which the ruins extend as far as the eye can reach for several miles beyond the walls. Cicero says that, on leaving the gate, the first tombs yon meet are those of Metellus, the Scipios, and Servilius. The tomb of the Scipios has been discovered in the very place which he describes, and transported to the Vatican. Yet it was, in some sort, a sacrilege to displace these illustrious ashes ; imagination is more nearly allied than is generally imagined to morality ; we must beware of shocking it. Some of these tombs are so large, that the houses of peasants have been worked out in them, for the Romans consecrated a large space to the last remains of their friends and their relatives. They were strangers to that arid principle of utility which fertilises a few corners of earth the more by devastating the vast domain of sentiment and thought. " You see at a little distance from the Appian Way a temple raised by the Republic to Honour and Virtue ; another to the God which compelled Hannibal to remeasure his steps ; the Temple of Egeria, where Numa went to consult his tutelar deity, is at a little distance on the left hand. Around these tombs the traces of virtue alone are to be found. No monument of the long ages of crime which disgraced the empire are to be found beside the places where these illustrious dead repose ; they rest amongst the relics of the Republic. " The aspect of the Campagna around Rome has something in it singu- larly remarkable. Doubtless it is a desert ; there are neither trees nor habitations ; but the earth is covered with a profusion of natural flowers, which the energy of vegetation renews incessantly. These creeping plants insinuate themselves among the tombs, decorate the ruins, and seem placed there solely to do honour to the dead. You would suppose that nature was too proud there to suffer the labours of man, since Cincinnatus no longer holds the plough which furrows its bosom ; it produces flowers in wild pro- fusion, which are of no sort of use to the existing generation. These vast uncultivated plains will doubtless have few attractions for the agriculturist, administrators, and all those who speculate on the earth, with a view to extract from it the riches it is capable of aftbrdiug; but the thoughtful MADAME DE STAEL. 353 minds, whom death occupies as much as life, are singularly attracted by the aspect of that Campagna, where the present times have left no trace ; that earth which cherishes only the dead, and covers them in its love with useless flowers — plants which creep along the surface, and never acquire sufficient strength to separate themselves from the ashes, which they have the appear- ance of caressing." — Corinne^ book v. c. 1. How many travellers have traversed the Appian Way, but how few have felt the deep inipressions which these words are fitted to produce ! " The churches of modern Rome," continues the same author, " are deco- rated with the magnificence of antiquity, but there is something sombre and striking in the intermingling of these beautiful marbles with the ornaments stripped from the Pagan temples. The columns of porphyry and granite were so numerous at Rome, that they ceased to have any value. At St John Lateran, that church so famous from the councils of Avhich it was the theatre, there were such a quantity of marble columns that many of them were covered with plaster to be converted into pilasters — so completely had the multitude of riches rendered them indifferent. Some of these columns came from the tomb of Adrian, and bear yet upon their capitals the mark of the geese which saved the Roman people. These columns support the ornaments of Gothic churches, and some rich sculptures in the arabesque order. The urn of Agrippa has received the ashes of a pope, for the dead themselves have yielded their place to other dead, and the tombs have changed tenants nearly as often as the mansions of the living. " Near St John Lateran is the holy stair, transported from Jerusalem. No one is permitted to ascend it but on his knees. In like manner Caesar and Claudius ascended on their knees the stair which led to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus. Beside St John Lateran is the Baptistery, where Constantine was baptised— in the middle of the Place before the church is an obelisk, perhaps the most ancient monument which exists in the world — an obelisk contemporary with the war of Troy — an obelisk which the barbarian Carabyses respected so much as to stop for its beauty the conflagration of a city — an obelisk for which a king put in pledge the life of his only son. The Romans, in a surprising manner, got it conveyed from the depths of Egypt to Italy — they turned aside the course of the Nile to bring its waters so as to convey it to the sea. Even then that obelisk was covered with hierogl}'- phics whose secrets have been kept for so many ages, and which still with- stand the researches of our most learned scholars. Possibly the Indians, the Egyptians, the antiquity of antiquity, might be revealed to us in these mysterious signs. The wonderful charm of Rome consists, not merely in the beauty of its monuments, but in the interest which they all awaken, and that species of charm increases daily with every fresh study." — Ibid. c. 3. We add only a feeble prosaic translation of the splendid improvisatore effusion of Corinne on the Cape of Mesinum, surrounded by the marvels of the shore of Baiae and the Phlegrian fields. " Poetry, nature, history, here rival each other in grandeur— here you can embrace in a single glance all the revolutions of time and all its prodigies. " I see the Lake of Avernus, the extinguished crater of a volcano, wiiose w^aters formerly inspired so much terror — Acheron, Phlegethon, which a subterraneous flame caused to boil, are the rivers of the inferuals visited by J^neas. VOL. in. Z 354 MADAME DE STAEL. " Fire, that devouring element which created the world, and is destined to consume it, was formerly an object of the greater terror that its laws w^ere unknown. Nature, in the olden times, revealed its secrets to poetry alone. " The City of CunicT, the Cave of the Sibyl, the Temple of Apollo, were placed on that height. There grew the wood whence was gathered the golden branch. The country of ^^^neas is around you, and the fictions consecrated by genius have become recollections of which we still seek the traces. " A Triton plunged into these waves the presumptuous Trojan who dared to defy the divinities of the deep by his songs— these water-worn and sonorous rocks have still the character which Yirgil gave them. Imagination was faithful even in the midst of its omnipotence. The genius of man is creative when he feels Nature— imitative when he fancies he is creating. " In the midst of these terrible masses, gi'ay witnesses of the creation, we see a new mountain which the volcano has produced. Here the earth is stormy as the ocean, and does not, like it, re-enter peaceably into its limits. The heavy element, elevated by subterraneous fire, fills up valleys, ' rains mountains,' and its petrified waves attest the tempests which once tore its entrails. " If you strike on this hill, the subterraneous vault resounds — you would say that the inhabited earth is nothing but a crust ready to open and swallow us up. The Campagna of Naples is the image of human passion — sulphurous, but fruitful ; its dangers and its pleasures appear to grow out of those glowing volcanoes which give to the air so many charms, and cause the thunder to roll beneath our feet. " Pliny boasted that his country was the most beautiful in existence — he studied nature to be able to appreciate its charms. Seeking the inspiration of science as a warrior does conquest, he set forth from this promontory to observe Vesuvius athwart the flames, and those flames consumed him. " Cicero lost his life near the promontory of Gaeta, which is seen in the distance. The Triumvirs, regardless of posterity, bereaved it of the thoughts which that great man had conceived — it was on us that his murder was com- mitted. " Cicero sank beneath the poniards of t}Tants — Scipio, more unfortunate, was banished by his fellow-citizens while still in the enjoyment of freedom. He terminated his days near that shore, and the ruins of his tomb are still called the ' Tower of our Country.' What a touching allusion to the last thought of that great spirit ! "Marius fled into those marshes not far from the last home of Scipio. Thus in all ages the people have persecuted the really great ; but they are avenged by their apotheosis, and the Roman, who conceived their power ex- tended even unto heaven, placed Romulus, Numa, and Caesar in the firma- ment — new stars which confound in our eyes the rays of glory and the celestial radiance. " Oh, Memory ! noble power ! thy empire is in these scenes ! From age to age, strange destiny ! man is incessantly bewailing what he has lost ! These remote ages are the depositaries in their turn of a greatness which is no more ; and while the pride of thought, glorying in its progress, darts into futurit}^ our soul seems still to regret an ancient country to which the past in some degree brings it back." — Book xii. c. 4. Enough has now been quoted to give the unlettered reader a conception of the descriptive character of these two great Continental writers — to recall to the learned one some of the most delightful moments of his life. To complete the MADAME DE STAEL. 355 parallel, Tve shall now present a few of the finest passao-es of a similar character from Sir Walter Scott, that our readers may be able to appreciate at a single sitting the varied excellences of the greatest masters of poetic prose who have appeared in modern times. The first is the well-known opening scene of IvanltGe. " The sun was setting upon one of the rich grassy glades of that forest, which we have mentioned in the beginning of the chapter. Hundreds of broad-headed, short-stemmed, wide-branched oalvs, which had witnessed perhaps the stately march of the Roman soldiery, fluug their gnarled arms over a thick carpet of the most delicious greensward ; in some places they were intermingled with beeches, hollies, and copsewood of various descrip- tions, so closely as totally to intercept the level beams of the sinking sun ; in others they receded from each other, forming those long sweeping vistas in the intricacy of which the eye delights to lose itself, while imagination considers them as the paths to yet wilder scenes of sylvan solitude. Here the red rays of the sun shot a broken and discoloured light, that partially hung upon the shattered boughs and mossy trunks of the trees, and there they illuminated in brilliant patches the portions of turf to which they made their way. A considerable open space, in the midst of this glade, seemed formerly to have been dedicated to the rites of Druidical superstition ; for, on the summit of a hillock, so regular as to seem artificial, there still remained part of a circle of rough unhewn stones, of large dimensions. Seven stood upright ; the rest had been dislodged from their places, probably by the zeal of some convert to Christianity, and lay, some prostrate near their former site, and others on the side of the hill. One large stone only had found its way to the bottom, and in stopping the course of a small brook, which glided smoothly round the foot of the eminence, gave, by its opposition, a feeble voice of murmur to the placid and elsewhere silent streamlet." The next is the equally celebrated description of the churchyard in the introductory chapter of Old Mortality. " Farther up the narrow valley, and in a recess which seems scooped out of the side of the steep heathy bank, there is a deserted burial-ground which the little cowards are fearful of approaching in the twilight. To me, however, the place has an inexpressible charm. It has been long the favourite termination of my walks, and, if my kind patron forgets not his promise, will (and probably at no very distant day) be my final resting- place after my mortal pilgrimage. " It is a spot which possesses all the solemnity of feeling attached to a burial-ground, without exciting those of a more unpleasing description. Having been very little used for many years, the few hillocks which rise above the level plain are covered with the same short velvet turf. The monuments, of which there are not above seven or eight, are half sunk in the ground and overgrown with moss. No newly-erected tomb disturbs the sober serenity of our reflections by reminding us of recent calamity, and no rank springing grass forces upon our imagination the recollection, that it owes its dark luxuriance to the foul and festering remnants of mortality which ferment beneath. The daisy which sprinkles the sod, and the hare- bell which hangs over it, derive their pure nourishment from the dew of heaven, and their growth impresses us with no degrading or disgusting recollections. Death has indeed been here, and its traces are before us ; 356 MADAME DE STAEL. but they are softened and deprived of their horror by our distance from the period when they have been first impressed. Those who sleep beneath are only connected with us by the reflection, that they have once been what we now are, and that, as theii' relics are now identified with their mother earth, ours shall, at some future period, undergo the same transformation. The third is a passage equally well-known, and hardly less beautiful, from the Antiquary. " The sun was now resting in his huge disc upon the edge of the level ocean, and gilded the accumulation of towering clouds through which he had travelled the livelong day, and which now assembled on all sides, like misfortunes and disasters around a sinking empire and falling monarch. Still, however, his dying splendour gave a sombre magnificence to the massive congregation of vapours, forming out of their unsubstantial gloom the show of pyramids and towers, some touched with gold, some with purple, some with a hue of deep and dark red. The distant sea, stretched beneath this varied and gorgeous canopy, lay almost portentously still, reflecting back the dazzling and level beams of the descending luminary, and the splendid colouring of the clouds amidst which he was setting. Nearer to the beach, the tide rippled onward in waves of sparkling silver, that imperceptibly, yet rapidly, gained upon the sand. " With a mind employed in admiration of the romantic scene, or perhaps on some more agitating topic. Miss Warder advanced in silence by her father's side, whose recently oflfeuded dignity did not stoop to open any conversation. Following the windings of the beach, they passed one projecting point or headland of rock after another, and now found them- selves under a huge and continued extent of the precipices by which that iron-bound coast is in most places defended. Long projecting reefs of rock, extending under water, and only evincing their existence by here and there a peak entirely bare, or by the breakers which foamed over those that were partially covered, rendered Kuockwinnock Bay dreaded by pilots and ship- masters. The crags which rose between the beach and the mainland, to the height of two or three hundred feet, aftbrded in their crevices shelter for unnumbered sea-fowl, in situations seemingly secured by their dizzy height from the rapacity of man. Many of these wild tribes, with the instinct which sends them to seek the land before a storm arises, were now winging towards their nests with the shrill and dissonant clang which announces disquietude and fear. The disc of the sun became almost totally obscured ere he had altogether sunk below the horizon, and an early and lurid shade of darkness blotted the serene twilight of a summer evening. The wind began next to arise ; but its wild and moaning sound was heard for some time, and its eff'ects became visible on the bosom of the sea, before the gale was felt on shore. The mass of waters, now dark and threatening, began to lift itself in larger ridges, and sink in deeper furrows, forming weaves that rose high in foam upon the breakers, or burst upon the beach with a sound resembling distant thunder." Few objects are less beautiful than a bare sheet of water in heathy hills, but see what it becomes under the inspira- tion of genius. '' It was a mild summer day. The beams of the sun, as is not uncommon in Zetland, were moderated and shaded by a silvery haze, which filled the atmosphere, and, destroying the strong contrast of light and shade, gave even to noon the sober livery of the evening twilight. The little lake, not three-quarters of a mile in circuit, lay in profound quiet; its surface MADAME DE STAEL. 357 imdimpled, save when one of the numerous water-fowl, which glided on its surface, dived for an instant under it. The depth of the water gave the whole that cerulean tint of bluish green, which occasioned its being called the Green Loch ; and at present, it formed so perfect a mirror to the bleak hills by which it was surrounded, and which lay reflected on its bosom, that it was difficult to distinguish the water from the land ; nay, in the shadowy uncertainty occasioned by the thin haze, a stranger could scarce have been sensible that a sheet of water lay before him. A scene of more complete solitude, having all its peculiarities heightened by the extreme serenity of the weather, the quiet gray composed tone of the atmosphere, and the perfect silence of the elements, could hardly be imagined. The very aquatic birds, who frequented the spot in great numbers, forbore their usual flight and screams, and floated in profound tranquillity upon the silent water." It is hard to saj to which of these mighty masters of descrip- tion the palm shoukl be awarded. Scott is more simple in his language, more graphic in his details, more thoroughly imbued with the character of the place he is desirous of portraying : Chateaubriand is more resplendent in the images which he selects, more fastidious in the features he draws, more gorgeous from the magnificence with which he is surrounded : Madame de Stael, inferior to both in the powers of delineating nature, is superior to either in rousing the varied emotions dependent on historical recollections or melancholy impressions. It is remarkable that, though she is a southern writer, and has thrown into Corinne all her own rapture at the sun and the recollections of Italy, yet it is with a northern eye that she views the scenes it presents — it is not with the living, but the mighty dead, that she holds communion — the chords she loves to strike are those melancholy ones which vibrate more strongly in a northern than a southern heart. Chateaubriand is imbued more largely with the genuine spirit of the south : albeit a Frank by origin, he is filled with the spirit of Oriental poetry. His soul is steeped in the cloudless skies, and desultory life, and boundless recollections of the East. Scott has no decided locality. He has struck his roots into the human heart — he has described Nature with a master s hand, under whatever aspects she is to be seen : but his associations are of Gothic origin; his spirit is of chivalrous descent; the nature which he has in general drawn is the sweet gleam of sunshine in a northern climate. M. DE TOCQUEYILLE [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, January 1836 & May 1847] M. DE TocQUEYiLLE is One of the greatest of the political philosophers of the present day. Alone of all his contem- poraries, his best works will bear a comparison with those of Machiavelli and Bacon. Less caustic and condensed than Tacitus, less imaginative and eloquent than Burke, he possesses the calm judgment, the discriminating eye, and the just reflection, which have immortalised the Florentine statesman and the English philosopher. Born and bred in the midst of the yehement strife of parties in his own country, placed midway, as it were, between the ruins of feudal and the reconstruction of modern society in France, he has sur- veyed the contest with an impartial gaze. He has brought to the examination of republican institutions, in the United States, the eye of calm reason and the powers of philosophic reflection. The war-cries, the illusions, the associations of neither party have been able to disturb his steady mind. Though descended of an ancient family, he is not bigoted in favour of the old regime ; though belonging to a profession where strenuous efforts can alone insure success, he is not blind to the dangers of the new order of things. The feudal ages, with their dignified manners, glorious episodes, and lieart- stirring recollections, are not lost upon him, but they have not closed his eyes to the numerous evils which they brought in their train. Modern times, with their general activity, vast achievements, and boundless anticipations, have produced their full effect on his thoughtful mind ; but they have not rendered him insensible to the perils with which they are fraught. He is a Burke without his imagi- nation — a ]\Iachiavelli without his crimes. M. DE TOCQTJEYILLE. 359 M. de Tocqueville, it is well known, is a firm believer in the progress of society to a general system of equality and popular government. He thinks that, for better or for worse, this tendency is inevitable ; that all efforts to resist it are vain, and that true wisdom consists in accommodating ourselves to the new order of things, and making the tran- sition with as little confusion and individual distress as may be. America he considers as the type of what Europe is to become ; though he has grievous misgivings as to the final result of such a prostration of the great interests of society as has there taken place, and is too well-read a scholar not to know that it was in the institutions of the Byzantine empire that a similar levelling resulted in ancient times. But being thus a devout believer, if not in the doctrine of perfectibility, at least in that of ceaseless progress towards democracy, his opinions are of the highest value when he portrays the perils with which the new order of things is attended. Alone of all the moderns, he has fixed the pubhc attention upon the real danger of purely republican institu- tions ; he first has discerned, in their working in America, where it is that the lasting peril is to be apprehended. Passing by the bloodshed, suffering, and confiscations with which the transition from aristocratic ascendency to demo- cratic power is necessarily attended, he has examined with a scrutinising eye the practical working of the latter system in the United States, where it had been long established and was in pacific undisputed sovereignty. He has demon- strated that, in such circumstances, it is not the lueahiess but the strength of the ruling power in the state which is the great danger ; and that the many-headed despot, acting by means of a subservient press and servile juries, speedily becomes as formidable to real freedom as ever Eastern sul- taun with his despotic power and armed guards has proved. The works of this very eminent writer, however, are by no means of equal merit. The last two volumes of his Democratie en Amerique are much inferior to the first. In the latter, he sketched out with a master hand, when fresh from the object of his study, the practical working of demo- cratic institutions, when entirely free from all the impedi- ments which, it was alleged, concealed or thwarted their operation in the Old World. He delineated the results of 360 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. tlie republican principle in a new state, without a hereditary nobility, established church, or national debt ; unfettered by primogeniture, pauperism, or previous misgovernment ; surrounded by boundless lands of exceeding fertility, with all the powers of European knowledge to bring them into cultivation, and all the energy of the Anglo-Saxon race to carry out the mission of Japhet — to replenish the earth and subdue it. The world had never seen, pro- bably the world will never again see, the democratic prin- ciple launched into activity under such favourable circum- stances, and when its practical effect, for good or for evil, could with so much accuracy and certainty be discerned. The study and delineation of such an experiment, in such circumstances, and on such a scale, by a competent observer, must have been an object of the highest interest at any time ; but what must it be when that observer is a man of the capacity and judgment of M. de Tocqueville ? The latter volumes of the same work, however, have dipped into more doubtful matters, and have brought for- ward more questionable opinions. The inquisitive mind, philosophic turn, and deep reflection of the author, indeed, are everywhere conspicuous ; but his opinions do not equally, as in the first two volumes, bear the signet-mark of truth stamped upon them. They are more speculative and fanciful ; founded rather on contemplation of future, than observation of present effects. When De Tocqueville painted the unrestrained working of democracy on political thought and parties, as he saw it around him in the course of his residence in America, he drew a picture which all, in circumstances at all similar, must at once have recognised as trustworthy, because it was only an extension of what they had witnessed in their own vicinity. But when he extended these effects so far as he has done in his later volumes, to manners, opinions, habits, and the intercourse of the sexes, the attempt seemed overstrained. The theory, beyond all question just to a certain point, was pushed too far. M. de Tocqueville's great reputation, accordingly, has been somewhat impaired by the publication of his last two volumes on democracy in America ; and it is to the first two that the philosophic student most frequently recurs for light on the practical working of the popular system. M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. 361 Perhaps, too, there is another, and a still more cogent reason, why the reputation of this philosopher has not con- tinued so general as it at first was. This is his imjpartiality . Both the great parties which divide the world turned to his work on its first appearance with avidity, in the hope of discovering something favourable to their respective views. Neither were disappointed. Both found numerous facts and observations of the very highest importance, and having a material bearing on the points at issue between thein. Enchanted with tlie discovery, each raised an Jo Pceaii; and, in the midst of a chorus of praise from Liberals and Conservatives, M. de Tocqueville took his place as the first political philosopher of the age. But in process of time, both discovered something in his opinions which they would rather had been omitted. The popular party were displeased at seeing it proved that the great and virtuous middle classes of society could establish a despotism as complete, and more irresistible, than any sultaun of Asia; the aristocratic, at find- ing the opinion of the author not disguised that the tendency to democracy was irresistible, and that, for good or for evil, it had irrevocably set in upon human affairs. But present celebrity is seldom a test of future fame ; in matters of thought and reflection, scarcely ever so. What makes a didactic author popular at the moment is the coincidence of his opinions with those of his readers, in the main, and the tracing them out to some consequences as yet new to them. What gives him fame with futurity is, his having boldly resisted general delusions, and violently, and to the great vexation of his contemporaries, first demonstrated the erroneous nature of many of their opinions, which subsequent experience has shown to be false. " The present and the future," says Sir Joshua Reynolds, " are rivals ; he who pays court to the one, must lay his account with being discoun- tenanced by the other." We augur the more favourably for M. de Tocqueville's lasting fame, from his being no longer quoted by party writers on either side of the questions which divide society. That human affairs are now undergoing a great and dur- able alteration ; that we are in a transition state of society, when new settlements are taking place, and the old levels are heaved up or displaced by expansive force from beneath, 362 M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. is imiversallj admitted ; but the world is as jet iu tlie dark as to the ultimate results, whether for good or evil, of these vast and organic changes. While the popular advocates look upon them as the commencement of a new era in social existence — as the opening of a period of knowledge, freedom, and general happiness, in which the human race, freed from the fetters of feudal tyranny, is to arrive at an unprece- dented state of social felicity — the Conservative party every- where regard them as fraught with the worst possible effects to all classes in society, and to none more immediately than to those by whom they are so blindly urged forward, as con- ducing to the destruction of all the bulwarks both of pro- perty and fi-eedom. While these opposite and irreconcilable opinions are honestly and firmly maintained by millions on either side of this great controversy, and victory inclines sometimes to one side and sometimes to another in the course of the contests, civil and military, which it engenders, "Time rolls on his ceaseless course;" the actors and the spectators in the world's debate are alike hurried to the grave, and new generations succeed, who are borne along by the same mighty stream, and inherit from their parents the passions and prejudices inseparable from a question in which such boundless expectations have been excited on the one side, and such vital interests are at stake on the other. The symptoms of this transition state distinctly appear, not merely in the increase of political power on the part of the lower classes in almost every state of Western Europe, but in the general formation of warm hopes and anticipations on their parts inconsistent with their present condition, and the universal adaptation of science, literature, arts, and manufactures to their wants. Supposing the most decided reaction to take place in public feeling in the British domi- nions, and the most Conservative Administration to be placed at the helm, still the state has been essentially revolution- ised. The great organic change has been made, and cannot be undone. Government is no longer, and never again will be, as long as a mixed constitution lasts, a free agent. It is impelled by the inclinations of the majority of 900,000 electors, in whom supreme power is substantially vested. At one time it may be too revolutionary, at another too monar- chical; but iu either it can only be the reflecting mirror of M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. S63 public opinion, and must receive, not communicate, the impulse of general thought. France is irrecoverably gone clown the gulf. All the checks either on arbitrary or popu- lar power have been completely destroyed by the insane ambition of its populace; and its capital has been trans- formed into a vast arena, where two savage wdld beasts, equally fatal to mankind — despotic power and democratic ambition — fiercely contend for the mastery, but where the fair form of Freedom is never again destined to appear. Spain and Portugal are torn by the same furious passions : a Vendean straggle is maintained with heroic constancy in the north; a Jacobin revolution is rapidly spreading in the south; and amidst a deadly civil war, and the confiscation of church and funded property, the democratic and despotic principles are rapidly coming into collision, and threaten speedily there, as elsewhere, to extinguish all the securities of real freedom in the shock. It is not merely, however, in the political world that the symptoms of a vast organic change in Western Europe are to be discerned. Manners and habits evince as clearly the prodigious, and, as we fear, degrading transition which is going on amongst us. We are not blindly attached to the customs of former times, and willingly admit that, in some respects, a change for the better has taken place ; but in others how wofully for the worse, and how prodigious, at all events, is the alteration, whether for better or worse, which is in progress ! With the feeling of chivalry still giving dignity to the higher ranks, and a sense of loyalty yet ele- vating the lower ; with religion paramount in all the influ- ential classes, and subordination as yet unshaken among the industrious poor, a state of manners ensued, a degree of feli- city was attained, a height of national glory was reached, to which the future generations of Europe will look back with the more regret that, once lost, it is altogether irrecoverable. We do not despair of the fortunes of our country, still less of the human race ; but we have no hope that those bright and glorious days can ever return. Vigour, indeed, is not awanting ; activity — restless, insatiable activity, is in profu- sion ; talent is as yet undecayed ; but where are the elevated feelings, the high resolves, the enduring constancy, the reli- gious inspiration, the moral resolution, which gave dignity 364 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. and grandeur to the past age '? Tliese qualities, doubtless, are still found in many individuals ; but we speak of tlie general tendency of things, not the character of particular men. Even where tliej do occur, are they not chiefly to be discerned in those of a certain standing in life '? and are they not remarked by the rising generation as remnants of the former age, which are fast disappearing, and will soon be totally extinct % Look at education, — above all, the education of the middle and lower orders, — and say whether a vast and degrading change is not there rapidly taking place '? It is there, more than anywhere else, that " coming events cast their shadows before." Elevating or ennobling knowledge, moral and reli- gious instruction, purifying and entrancing compositions are discarded. The arts, the mechanical or manufacturing arts, alone are looked to ; nothing is thought of but what can immediately be turned into money. The Church, and all the institutions connected with it, are considered as not destined to any lengthened endurance, and therefore classical learning is scouted and abandoned. The philosopher's stone is alone sought after by the alchemists of modern days ; nothing is studied but what will render the human mind prolific of dollars. To purify the heart and humanise the afi'ections; to improve the understanding and dignify the manners ; to provide not the means of elevation in life, but the power of bearing elevation with propriety; to confer not the power of subduing others, but the means of conquer- ing one's self ; to impress love to God and goodwill towards men, are deemed the useless and antiquated pursuits of the monks of former days. Practical chemistry and sulphuric acid, decrepitating salts and hydraulic engines, algebraic equa- tions and commercial academies, mercantile navigation and double and single book-keeping, have fairly, in the semina- ries of the middle ranks, driven Cicero and Virgil off the field. The vast extension of education, the prodigious pre- sent activity and energy of the human mind, the incessant efforts of the middle ranks to elevate and improve their worldly situation, afford, we fear, no reasonable grounds for hoping that this degrading change can be arrested ; on the contrary, tliey are the very circumstances which afford a moral certainty that it will continue and increase. M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 365 That the energy, expectations, and discontent now gene- rally prevalent among the labouring classes, and appearing in the feverish desire for social amelioration, and the ready reception of any projects, how vain soever, which promise to promote it, will lead to great and important changes in the condition both of government, society, and manners, is too obvious to require any illustration. The intense and fever- ish attention to worldly objects which these changes at once imply and produce, the undue extension of artificial wants among the labouring poor which they generate, the severe competition to which all classes are in consequence exposed, the minute subdivision of labour which such a hio'h and increasing state of manufacturing skill occasions, the expe- rienced impossibility of rising in any department without a thorough and exclusive attention to its details, are the very circumstances of all others the most fatal to the improvement of the understanding, or the regulation of the heart. Amidst the shock of so many contending interests, the calm pursuits of science, which lead not to wealth, will be abandoned; the institutions which as yet maintain it will be sacrificed to the increasing clamour of democratic jealousy; literature will become a mere stimulant to the passions, or amusement of an hour; religion, separated from its property, will sink into a trade, in which the prejudices and passions of the concrreo-ations of each minister will be inflamed instead of being subdued. Every generous or ennobling study will be discarded for the mere pursuits of wealth or animal enjoy- ment; excitement in all its forms will become the universal object; and in the highest state of manufacturing skill, and in the latest staojes of social regeneration, our descendants may sink irrecoverably into the degeneracy of Roman or Italian manners. The extension and improvement of the mechanical arts — the multiplication of railroads, canals, and harbours — ex- traordinary rapidity of internal communication — increasing craving for newspapers, and excitement in all its forms; the general spread of comfort, and universal passion of luxury, afford no antidote whatever against the native corruption of the human heart. We may go to Paris from London in three hours, and to Constantinople in twelve ; we may communicate with India, by tlie telegraph, in a forenoon, 366 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. and make an autumnal excursion to the Pyramids or Per- sepolis in a fortnight, by steam-boats, and yet, amidst all our improvements, be the most degraded and corrupt of the human race. Internal communication was brought to per- fection in the Roman empire, but did that revive the spirit of the legions, or avert the arms of the barbarians '? — did it restore the age of Virgil and Cicero 1 Because all the citizens gazed daily on the most sumptuous edifices, and lived amidst a forest of the noblest statues, did that hinder the rapid corruption of manners, the irretrievable degeneracy of char- acter, the total extinction of genius 1 Did their proud and ignorant contempt of the barbarous nations save either the Greeks or the Romans from subjugation by a ruder and more savage, but a fresher and a nobler race 'i Were they not prating about the lights of the age, and the unparalleled state of social refinement, when the swords of Alaric and Attila were already drawn 1 In the midst of all our excursions, have we yet penetrated that deepest of all mys- teries, the human heart 1 with all our improvements, have we eradicated one evil passion or extinguished one guilty propensity in that dark fountain of evil '^ Alas ! facts, clear undeniable facts, prove the reverse. With the spread of knowledge, and the growth of every species of social improvement, general depravity has gone on increasing with an accelerated pace, both in France and England, and every increase of knowledge seems but an addition to the length of the lever by which vice dissolves the fabric of society.''' It is not simple knowledge, it is knowledge detached from religion, that produces this fatal result ; and unhappily that is precisely the species of know- ledge which is the present object of fervent popular desire. The reason of its corrupting tendency on morals is evi- dent — when so detached it multiplies the desires and passions of the heart without any increase to its regulating principles ; it augments the attacking without strengthen- ing the resisting powers, and thence the disorder and license it spreads through society. The invariable charac- * The curious tables of M. Guerrin prove that in cveiy department of Franco, without exception, general depravity is just in proportion to the extension of knowledge. " At one throw," says the candid Mr Bulwcr, " he has bowled down all our preconceived ideas on this vital subject."— See Bulwer's France, vol. i., Appendix. M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. 367 teristic of a declining and corrupt state of society is a progressiA'e increase in the force of passion, and a pro- gressive decline in the influence of duty ; and this tendency, so conspicuous in France, so evidently beginning amongst ourselves, is increased by nothing so much as that spread of education without religion which is the manifest tendency of the present times. What renders it painfully clear that this corruption has not only begun, but has far advanced amidst a large propor- tion of our people, is the evident decline in the efi'ect of moral character upon political influence. It used to be the boast, and the deserved boast of England, tliat talents the most commanding, descent the most noble, achievements the most illustrious, could not secure power without the aid of moral virtue. These times are gone past. Depravity of character, sordidness of disposition, recklessness of conduct, are now no security whatever against political demagogues wielding the very greatest political influence, nay, to their being held up as tlie object of public admiration, and pos- sibly forced upon the Government of the country. What has the boasted spread of education done to exclude such characters from political weight '? Nothing — it is, on the contrary, the very thing which gives them their ascendency. The time has evidently arrived when the com- mission of poHtical crimes, the stain of guilt, the opprobrium of disgrace, is no objection whatever with a large and influ- ential party to political leaders, provided they possess the qualities likely to insure success in their designs. " It is the fatal eff'ect," says Madame de Stael, " of revolutions to obliterate altogether our ideas of right and wrong, and instead of the eternal distinctions of morality and religion, to apply no other test, in general estimation, to political actions but success." This afibrds a melancholy presage of what may be expected when the same vicious and degrading principles are still more generally embraced and applied to the ordinary transactions, characters, and business of life. M. de Tocqueville has well explained how this melancholy progress is hastened by the triumph of democracy : — " If absolute power were re-established amongst the democratic nations of Europe, I am persuaded that it would assume a new form, and appear under features unknown to our forefathers. There was a time in Europe, when the laws and the consent of the people had invested princes with 368 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. almost unlimited authority; but tliey scarcely ever availed themselves of it. I do not speak of the prerogatives of the nobility, of the authority of supreme courts of justice, of corporations and their chartered right, or of provincial privileges, "svhich served to break the blows of the sovereign au- thority, and to maintain a spirit of resistance in the nation. Independently of these political institutions,— which, however opposed they might be to personal liberty, served to keep alive the love of freedom in the mind of the public, and which may be esteemed to have been useful in this respect — the manners and opinions of the nation confined the royal authority within barriers which were not less powerful, although they were less conspicuous. Religion, the affections of the people, the benevolence of the prince, the sense of honour, family pride, provincial prejudices, custom, and public opinion limited the power of kings, and restrained their authority within an invisible circle. The constitution of nations was despotic at that time, but their manners were free. Princes had the right, but they had neither the means nor the desire, of doing whatever they pleased. " But what now remains of those barriers which formerly arrested the aggressions of tyranny ? Since religion has lost its empire over the souls of men, the most prominent boundary which divided good from evil is over- thrown ; the very elements of the moral world are indeterminate ; the princes and the people of the earth are guided by chance, and none can define the natural limits of despotism and the bounds of license. Long revolutions have for ever destroyed the respect which surrounded the rulers of the State ; and since they have been relieved from the burden of public esteem, princes may henceforward surrender themselves without fear to the seductions of arbitrary power. " When kings find that the hearts of their subjects are turned towards them, they are clement, because they are conscious of their strength ; and they are chary of the aftections of their people, because the affection of their people is the bulwark of the throne. A mutual interchange of goodwill then takes place between the prince and the people, which resembles the gracious intercourse of domestic society. The subjects may murmur at the sovereign's decree, but they are grieved to displease him ; and the sovereign chastises his subjects with the light hand of parental affection. " But when once the spell of loyalty is broken in the tumult of revolu- tion ; when successive monarchs have crossed the throne, so as alternately to display to the people the weakness of their right and the harshness of their power, the sovereign is no longer regarded by any as the Father of the State, and he is feared by all as its master. If he be weak, he is despised ; if he be strong, he is detested. He is himself full of animosity and alarm ; he finds that he is a stranger in his own country, and he treats his subjects like conquered enemies. " When the provinces and the towns formed so many different nations in the midst of their common country, each of them had a will of his own, which was opposed to the general spirit of subjection : but now that all the parts of the same empire, after having lost their immunities, their customs, their prejudices, their traditions, and their names, are subjected and accus- tomed to the same laws, it is not more difficult to oppress them collectively than it was formerly to oppress them singly. " Whilst the nobles enjoyed their power, and, indeed, long after that power was lost, the honour of aristocracy conferred an extraordinary degree of force upon their personal opposition. They afforded instances of men who, notwithstanding their weakness, still entertained a high opinion of their personal value, and dared to cope single-handed with the efforts of the public authority. But at the present day, when all ranks are more and more confounded, when the individual disappears in the throng, and is easily lost in the midst of a common obscurity, when the honour of monarchy has almost lost its empire without being succeeded by public virtue, and when M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 369 nothing can enable man to rise above himself, who shall say at what point the exigencies of power and the servility of weakness will stop ? " As long as family feeling was kept alive, the antagonist of oppression was never alone ; he looked about him, and found his clients, his hereditary friends and his kinsfolk. If this support was wanting, he was sustained by his ancestors, and animated by his posterity. But when patrimonial estates are divided, and when a few years sufl5ce to confound the distinctions of a race, where can family feeling be found ? What force can there be in the customs of a country which has changed, and is still perpetually changing, its aspect ; in which every act of tyranny has a precedent, and every crime an example ; in which there is nothing so old that its antiquity can save it from destruction, and nothing so unparalleled that its novelty can prevent it from being done ? What resistance can be offered by manners of so pliant a make, that they have already often yielded ? What strength can even public opinion have retained, when no twenty persons are connected by a common tie ; when not a man, nor a family, nor chartered corporation, nor class, nor free institution, has the power of representing or exerting that opinion ; and when every citizen — being equally weak, equally poor, and equally dependent — has only his personal impotence to oppose to the organ- ised force of the Government ? " The annals of France furnish nothing analogous to the condition in which that country might then be thrown. But it may be more aptly assi- milated to the times of old, and to those hideous eras of Roman oppression, when the manners of the people were corrupted, their traditions obliterated, their habits destroyed, their opinions shaken, and freedom, expelled from the laws, could find no refuge in the land ; when nothing protected the citi- zens, and the citizens no longer protected themselves ; when human nature was the sport of man, and princes wearied out the clemency of Heaven before they exhausted the patience of their subjects. Those who hope to revive the monarchy of Henry IV. or of Louis XIV., appear to me to be afflicted with mental blindness ; and when I consider the present condition of several European nations — a condition to which all the others tend — I am led to believe that they will soon be left with no other alternative than democratic liberty, or the tyranny of the Caesars." — Tocqueville, ii. 247. We shall not stop to show how precisely these views of Tocqueville coincide with what we have invariably advanced, or to express the gratification we experience at finding these principles now embraced by the ablest of the French Demo- cratic party, after the most enlightened view of American institutions. We hasten, therefore, to show that these results of the French Revolution, melancholy and depressing as they are, are nothing more than the accomplishment of what, forty-five years ago, Mr Burke prophesied of its ulti- mate effects. " The policy of such barbarous victors," says Mr Burke, " who contemn a subdued people, and insult their inhabitants, ever has been to destroy all vestiges of the ancient country in religion, policy, laws, and manners, to confound all temtorial limits, produce a general poverty, crush their nobles, princes, and pontiff's, to lay low everything which lifted its head above the level, or which could serve to combine or rally, in their distresses, the dis- banded people under the standard of old opinion. They have made France free in the manner in which their ancient friends to the rights of mankind VOL. III. 2 A 370 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. freed Greece, J^Iacedon, Gaul, and other nations. If their present project of a Republic should fail, all securities to a moderate freedom fail along with it ; they have levelled and crushed together all the orders which they found under the monarchy : all the indirect restraints which mitigate des- potism are removed, insomuch that if monarchy should ever again obtain an entire ascendency in France, under this or any other dynasty, it will pro- bably be, if not voluntarily tempered at setting out by the wise and virtuous counsels of the prince, the most completely arbitrary power that ever appeared on earth." — Bukke, v. 328, 333. If we examine the liistorj of the Avorld with attention, we shall find that, amidst great occasional variations pro- duced bj secondary and inferior causes, two great powers have been at work from the earliest times ; and, like the antagonist expansive and compressing force in physical nature, have, by their mutual and counteracting influence, produced the greatest revolutions and settlements in human affairs. These opposing forces are northern conquest and CIVILISED democracy. Their agency appears clear and forcible at the present times, and the spheres of their action are different ; but mighty ultimate results are to attend their irresistible operation in the theatres destined by nature for their respective operation. We, who have invariably and resolutely opposed the advances of democracy, and that equally when it raised its voice aloft on the seat of Government, as when it lurked under the specious guise of free trade or liberality, will not be accused of being blinded in favour of its effects. We claim, therefore, full credit for sincerity, and deem some weight due to our opinion, when we assert that it is the great moving poiuer in human affairs — the source of the greatest efforts of human genius — and, when duly restrained from running into excess, the grand instrument of human advancement. It is not from ignorance of, or insensibility to, its prodigious effects, that we have proved ourselves so resolute in resisting its undue expansion : it is, on the con- trary, from a full appreciation of them, from a thorough knowledge of the vast results, whether for good or evil, which it invariably produces. It is the nature of the democratic passion to produce an inextinguishable degree of vigour and activity among the middle classes of society — to develop an unknown energy among their widespread ranks — to fill their bosoms with insatiable and often visionary projects of advancement and M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. 371 amelioration, and inspire them with an ardent desire to raise themselves individually and collectively in the world. Thence the astonishing results — sometimes for good, some- times for evil — ^ which it produces. Its grand characteristic is energy, and energy not rousing the exertions merely of a portion of society, but awakening the dormant strength of millions ; not producing merely the chivalrous valour of the highbred cavalier, but drawing forth " the might that slum- bers in a peasant's arm." The greatest achievements of genius, the noblest efforts of heroism, that have illustrated the history of the species, have arisen from the efforts of this principle. Thence the fight of Marathon and the glories of Salamis — the genius of Greece and the conquests of Rome — the heroism of Sempach and the devotion of Haar- lem — the paintings of Raphael and the poetry of Tasso — the energy which covered with a velvet carpet the slopes of the Alps, and the industry which bridled the stormy seas of the German Ocean — the burning passions which carried the French legions to Cadiz and the Kremlin, and the sus- tained fortitude whicli gave to Britain the dominion of the waves. Thence, too, in its wilder and unrestrained excesses, the greatest crimes which have disfigured the dark annals of human wickedness — the massacres of Athens and the banishments of Florence— the carnage of Marius and the proscriptions of the Triumvirate — the violence of Cromwell and the bloodshed of Robespierre. As the democratic passion is thus a principle of such vital and searching energy, so it is from it, when acting under due regulation and control, that the greatest and most durable advances in social existence liave sprung. Why are the shores of the Mediterranean the scene to which the pilgrim, from every quarter of the globe, journeys to visit at once the cradles of civilisation, the birthplace of arts, of arms, of philosophy, of poetry, and the scenes of their highest and most glorious achievements '? Because freedom spread along its smiling shores; because the ruins of Athens and Sparta, of Rome and Carthage, of Tyre and Syracuse, lie on its margin ; because civilisation, advancing with the white sails which glittered on its blue expanse, pierced, as if impelled by central heat, through the dark and barbarous regions of the Celtic race who peopled its shores. 372 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. What gave Rome the empire of the ^vorld, and brought the venerable ensigns bearing the words " Senatii populoqiie Romano'' to the wall of Antoninus and the foot of Mount Atlas, the waters of the Euphrates and the Atlantic Ocean ? Democratic vigour. Democratic vigour, be it observed, duly coerced by Patrician loower ; the insatiable ambition of suc- cessive consuls, guided bj the wisdom of the senate; the unconquerable and inexhaustible bands which for centuries issued from the Roman Forum. What has spread the British dominion over the habitable globe, and converted the ocean into a peaceful lake for its internal carriage, and made the winds the instruments of its blessings to mankind, and spread its race in vast and inextinguishable multitudes through the New World ? Democratic ambition. Demo- cratic ambition, restrained and regulated at home by an adequate weight of aristocratic power; a government w^hich, guided by the stability of the patrician, but invigorated by the activity of the plebeian race, steadily advanced in con- quest, renown, and moral ascendency, till its fleets overspread the sea, and it has become a matter of certainty that half the globe must be peopled by its descendants. The continued operation of this undying vigour and energy is still more clearly evinced in the Anglo-American race, which originally sprung from the stern Puritans of Charles I.'s age, which have developed all the peculiarities of the democratic character in unrestrained profusion amidst the boundless wastes which lie open to their enterprise. M. Tocqueville lias described, with equal justice and eloquence, the extraordinary activity of these principles in the United States. " The inhabitants of the United States are never fettered by the axioms of their profession ; they escape from all the prejudices of their present sta- tion ; they are not more attached to one line of operation than to another ; they are not more prone to employ an old method than a new one ; they have no rooted habits, and they easily shake off the influence which the habits of other nations might exercise upon their minds, from a conviction that their country is unlike any other, and that its situation is without a precedent in the world. America is a land of wonders, in which every- thing is in constant motion, and every movement seems an improvement. The idea of novelty is there indissolubly connected with the idea of amelio- ration. No natural boundary seems to be set to the efforts of man ; and what is not yet done is only what he has not yet attempted to do. " This perpetual change which goes on in the United States, these fre- quent vicissitudes of fortune, accompanied by such unforeseen fluctuations in private and in public wealth, serve to keep the minds of the citizens in a M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. 373 perpetual state of feverish agitation, which admirably invigorates their exer- tions, and keeps them in a state of excitement above the ordinary level of mankind. The whole life of an American is passed like a game of chance, a revolutionary crisis, or a battle. As the same causes are continually in operation throughout the country, they ultimately impart an irresistible impulse to the national character. The American, taken as a chance speci- men of his countrymen, must then be a man of singular warmth in his desires, enterprising, fond of adventure, and above all of innovation. The same bent is manifest in all that he does : he introduces it into his political laws, his religious doctrines, his theories of social economy, and his domestic occupations ; he bears it with him in the depth of the backwoods, as well as in the business of the city. It is this same passion, applied to maritime com- merce, which makes him the cheapest and the quickest trader in the world. " It is not impossible to conceive the surpassing liberty which the Ameri- cans enjoy ; some idea may likewise be formed of the extreme equality which subsists amongst them ; but the political activity which pervades the United States must be seen in order to be understood. Xo sooner do you set foot upon the American soil than you are stunned by a kind of tumult ; a confused clamour is heard on every side ; and a thousand simultaneous voices demand the immediate satisfaction of their social wants. Everything is in motion around you : here, the people of one quarter of a town are met to decide upon the building of a church ; there, the election of a representa- tive is going on ; a little further, the delegates of a district are posting to the town, in order to consult upon some local improvements ; or in another place, the labourers of a village quit their ploughs to deliberate upon the project of a road or a public school. Meetings are called for the sole pur- pose of declaring their disapprobation of the line of conduct pursued by the Government; whilst, in other assemblies, the citizens salute the authorities of the day as the fathers of their country. Societies are formed which regard drunkenness as the principal cause of the evils under which the state labours, and which solemnly bind themselves to give a constant example of tem- perance. " The great political agitation of the American legislative bodies, which is the only kind of excitement that attracts the attention of foreign coun- tries, is a mere episode or a sort of continuation of that universal movement which originates in the lowest classes of the people, and extends succes- sively to all the ranks of society. It is impossible to spend more efforts in the pursuit of enjoyment." The great system of nature thus expands to our view. The democratic principle is the chief moving power which expels from the old-estabhshed centres of civilisation the race of men to distant and unpeopled regions ; which in the ancient world spread it with the Athenian galleys along the shores of the Mediterranean, and with the Roman legions penetrated the dark and savage forests of central Europe; which laid the foundation, in the kingdoms formed out of its provinces, of the supremacy of modern Europe, and is now w^tli the British navy extending as far as the waters of the ocean roll, peopling at once the new continent of Australasia and supplanting the sable millions of Africa ; piercing the primeval forests of Canada, and advancing with unceasing velocity towards the Rocky Mountains of America. Nor is it 374 M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. only by the subjects of Britain that this impelling force is felt. It exists in equal force among their descendants ; and from the seats where the Puritan contemporaries of Cromwell first sought an asylum from English oppression, an incessant craving, an unseen power, is for ever impelling multitudes to the yet untrodden forests of the West. " It caunot be denied that the British race has acquired an amazing pre- ponderance over all the other European races in the New World ; and that it is very superior to them in civilisation, in industry, and in power. As long as it is only surrounded by desert or thinly-peopled countries, as long as it encounters no dense population upon its route, through which it cannot work its way, it will assuredly continue to spread. The lines marked out by treaties will not stop it ; but it will everywhere transgress these imagin- ary barriers. " The geographical position of the British race in the New World is pecu- liarly favourable to its rapid increase. Above its northern frontiers the icy regions of the Pole extend ; and a few degrees below its southern confines lies the burning climate of the Equator. The Anglo-Americans are there- fore placed in the most temperate and habitable zone of the continent. '' The distance from Lake Superior to the Gulf of Mexico extends from the 47th to the 30th degree of latitude, a distance of more than 1200 miles, as the bird flies. The frontier of the United States winds along the whole of this immense line; sometimes falling within its limits, but more fre- quently extending far beyond it into the waste. It has been calculated that the Whites advance every year a mean distance of seventeen miles along the whole of this vast boundary. Obstacles, such as an unproductive district, a lake, or an Indian nation unexpectedly encountered, are sometimes met with. The advancing column then halts for a while ; its two extremities fall back upon themselves, and as soon as they are reunited they proceed onwards. This gradual and continuous progress of the European race towards the Rocky Mountains has the solemnity of a Providential event ; it is like a deluge of men rising unabatedly, and daily driven onwards by the hand of God. " Within this first line of conquering settlers towns are built, and vast States founded. In 1790 there were only a few thousand pioneers sprinkled along the valleys of the Mississippi ; and at the present day these valleys contain as many inhabitants as were to be found in the whole Union in 1790. Their population amounts to nearly four millions. The city of Washington was founded in 1800, in the very centre of the Union ; but such are the changes which have taken place, that it now stands at one of the extremities ; and the delegates of the most remote Western States are already obliged to perform a jouruey as long as that from Vienna to Paris. " It must not, then, be imagined that the impulse of the British race in the New World can be arrested. The dismemberment of the Union, and the hostilities which might ensue, the abolition of republican institutions, and the tyrannical government which might succeed it, may retard this impulse, but they cannot prevent it from ultimately fulfilling the destinies to Avhich that race is reserved. No power upon earth can close upon the emigrants that fertile wilderness, which offers resources to all industry, and a refuge from all want. Future events, of whatever nature they may be, will not deprive the Americans of their climate or of their inland seas, of their great rivers or of their exuberant soil. Nor will bad laws, revolutions, and anarchy be able to obliterate that love of prosperity and that spirit of enterprise which seem to be the distinctive characteristics of their race, or to extinguish that knowledge which guides them on their way. M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. 375 " Thus, in the midst of the uncertain future, one event at least is sure. At a period which may be said to be near, (for we are speaking of the life of a nation,) the Anglo-Americans will alone cover the immense space con- tained between the Polar regions and the Tropics, extending from the coast of the Atlantic to the shores of the Pacific Ocean ; the territory which will probably be occupied by the Anglo-Americans at some future time, may be computed to equal three-quarters of Europe in extent. The climate of the Union is upon the whole preferable to that of Europe, and its natural advantages are not less great ; it is therefore evident that its population will at some future time be proportionate to our own. Europe, divided as it is between so many different nations, and torn as it has been by incessant wars and the barbarous manners of the Middle Ages, has notwithstanding attained a population of 410 inhabitants to the square league. What cause can prevent the United States from having as numerous a population in time?" " The time will therefore come when one hundred and fifty millions of men will be living in North America, equal in condition, the progeny of one race, owing their origin to the same cause, and preserving the same civilisa- tion, the same language, the same religion, the same habits, the same man- ners, and imbued with the same opinions, propagated under the same forms. The rest is uncertain, but this is certain ; and it is a fact new to the world, a fact fraught with such portentous consequences as to baffle the efforts even of the imagination." It is not without reason, therefore, that Ave set out in this speculation, with the observation, that great and durable effects on human affairs are destined by Providence for the British race. And it is too obvious to admit of dispute that the democratic principle amongst us is the great moving power which thus impels multitudes of civilised beings into the wilderness of nature. Nothing but that principle could effect such a change. Civilised man rarely emigrates ; under a despotic government, never. What colonies has China sent forth to people the wastes of Asia 1 Are the Hindoos to be found spread over the vast archipelago of the Indian Ocean 1 Republican Rome colonised the world ; Republican Greece spread the light of civilisation along the shores of the Mediterranean ; but Imperial Rome could never main- tain the numbers of its own provinces, and the Grecian Empire slumbered on with a declining population for eleven hundred years. Is Italy, with its old civilised millions, or France, with its ardent and redundant peasantry, the store- house of nations from whence the European race is to be diffused over the world ? The colonies of Spain, torn by internal factions, and a prey to furious passions, are in the most miserable state, and constantly declining in numbers. '''' The tendency of nations in a high state of civilisation ever * TOCQUEVILLE, ii. 439. 376 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. is to remain at home ; to become wedded to the luxmies and enjoyments, the habits and refinements of an artificial state of existence, and regard all other people as rude and barbarous, unfit for the society, unequal to the reception of ciyilised existence, to slumber on for ages with a population poor, redundant, and declining. Such has for ages been the condition of the Chinese and the Hindoos, the Turks and the Persians, the Spaniards and the Italians; and hence no great settlements of mankind have proceeded from their loins. What, then, is the centrifugal force which counter- acts this inert tendency, and impels man from the heart of wealth, from the bosom of refinement, from the luxuries of civilisation, to the forests and the wilderness ? What sends him forth into the desert, impelled by the energy of the savage character, but yet with all the powers and acquisitions of civilisation at his command ; with the axe in his hand, but the Bible in his pocket, and the Encyclopedia by his side '? It is democracy which eflPects this prodigy ; it is that insatiable passion which overcomes alike the habits and affections of society, and sends forth the civilised pilgrim far from his kindred, far from his home, far from the bones of his fathers, to seek amidst Transatlantic wilds that free- dom and independence which his native country can no longer afford. It is in the restless activity which it engen- ders, the feverish desire of elevation which it awakens in all classes, the longing after a state of existence unattainable in long-established states which it produces, that the centrifugal force of civilised man is to be found. Above a hundred thousand emigrants from Great Britain in the year 1833 settled in the British colonies ; nearly two hundred thousand annually pass over to the whole of North America from the British isles ; and amidst the strife of parties, the collision of interests, the ardent hopes and chimerical anticipations incident to these days of transition, the English race is pro- fusely and indelibly transplanted into the boundless wastes prepared for its reception in the New World. As the democratic passion, however, is thus evidently the great moving power which is transferring the civilised Euro- pean race to the remote corners of the earth, and the British navy the vast vehicle raised up to supreme dominion for its conveyance ; so it is of the utmost importance to observe M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 377 tliat, if undue power is giyen to this impelling force, the machine which is performing these prodigies may be destroyed, and the central force, instead of operating with a steady and salutary pressure upon mankind, suddenly burst its barriers, and for ever cease to affect their fortunes. A spring acts upon a machine only as long as it is loaded or restrained ; remove the pressure, and its strength ceases to exist. This powerful and astonishing agency of the British race upon the fortunes of mankind would be totally destroyed by the triumph of Democracy in these islands. Multitudes, indeed, during the convulsions consequent on so calamitous an event, would fly for refuge to the American shores ; but, in the grinding and irreversible despotism which would necessarily and speedily follow its occurrence, the vital energy would become extinct which is now impelling the British race into every corner of the habitable earth. The stillness of absolute government would succeed the agitation of passion ; the inertness of aged civilisation at once fall upon the bounded state. From the moment that British freedom is extinouished by the overthrow of aristocratic influence, and the erection of the Commons into unrestramed power, the sacred fire which now animates the vast fabric of its dominion will become extinct, and England will cease to direct the destinies of half the globe. The Conservative party in this country, therefore, are not merely charged with the preservation of its own freedom — they are intrusted with the destinies of mankind. On the success of their exertions it depends, whether the democratic spirit in these islands is to be preserved, as heretofore, in that subdued form which has directed its energy to the civilisation of mankind, or to burst forth in those wild excesses which turn only to its ow^n ruin, and the desolation of the world. While the naval strength and colonial dominions of England have steadily and unceasingly advanced in Western Europe, and its influence is, in consequence, spread over all the maritime regions of the globe, another, and an equally irresistible power has risen up in the Eastern Hemisphere. If all the contests of centuries have turned to the advantage of the English navy, all the Continental strifes have, as unceasingly, augmented the strength of 378 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. Russia. From the time of tlie Czar Peter, when it first emerged from obscurity to take a leading part in Continental affairs, to the present moment, its progress has been unbroken. Alone, of all other states, during that long period it has experienced no reverses, but constantly advanced in power, territory, and resources ; for even the peace of Tilsit, which followed the disasters of Austerlitz and Friedland, was attended with an accession of territory. During that period it has successively swallowed up Courland and Livonia, Poland, Finland, the Crimea, the Ukraine, Wallachia, and ^loldavia. Its southern frontier is now washed by the Danube ; its eastern is within fifty leagues of Berlin and Vienna ; its advanced ports in the Baltic are almost within sight of Stockholm ; its south-eastern boun- dary, stretching far over the Caucasus, sweeps down to Erivan and the foot of Mount Ararat ; Persia and Turkey are irrevocably subjected to its influence ; a solemn treaty has given it the command of the Dardanelles ; a subsidiary Muscovite force has visited Scutari, and rescued the Osmanlis from destruction ; and the Sultan Mahmoud retains Con- stantinople only as the viceroy of the northern autocrat. The politicians of the day assert that Russia will fall to pieces, and its power cease to be formidable to Western Europe or Central Asia. They never were more com- pletely mistaken. Did Macedonia fall to pieces before it had subdued the Grecian commonwealths ; or Persia before it had conquered the Assyrian monarchy ; or the Goths and Vandals before they had subverted the Roman empire '? It is the general pressure of the north upon the south, not the force of any single state, which is the weight that is to be apprehended; that pressure will not be lessened, but, on the contrary, greatly increased, if the vast Scythian tribes should separate into different empires. Though one ^Muscovite throne were to be estabhshed at St Petersburg, a second at Moscow, and a third at Constantinople, the general pressure of the Russian race upon the southern states of Europe and Asia would not be one whit diminished. Still the delight of a warmer climate, the riches of long-established civilisa- tion, the fruits and wines of the south, the women of Italy or Circassia, would attract the brood of winter to the regions of the sun. The various tribes of the German race, the M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. ' 379 Gothic and Vandal swarms, the Huns and the Ostrogoths, were engaged in fierce and constant hostility with each other; and it was generally defeat and pressure from behind which impelled them upon their southern neighbours ; but that did not prevent them from bursting the barriers of the Danube and the Rhine, and overwhelming the civiHsation, and wealth, and disciphue, of the Roman empire. Such internal divisions only magnify the strengtli of the northern race by training them to the use of arms, and augmenting their mili- tary skill by constant exercise against each other ; just as the long-continued internal wars of the European nations have established an irresistible superiority of their forces over those of the other quarters of the globe. In the end the weight of the north, thus matured, drawn forth, and disci- plined, will ever be turned to the fields of southern conquest. The moving power with these vast bodies of men is the lust of conquest, and a passion for southern enjoyment. Democracy is unheeded or unknown amongst them ; if imported from foreign lands, it languishes and expires amidst the rigours of the climate. The energy and aspira- tions of men are concentrated on conquest — a passion more natural, more durable, more universal, than the democratic vigour of advanced civiHsation. It speaks a language intelli- gible to the rudest of men, and rouses passions of universal vehemence. Great changes may take place in human aff'airs ; but the time will never come when northern valour will not press on southern wealth, or refined corruption not require the renovating influence of indigent regeneration. This, then, is the other great moving power which, in these days of transition, is changing the destinies of mankind. Rapid as is the growth of the British race in America, it is not more rapid than that of the Russian in Europe and Asia. Fifty millions of men now furnish recruits to the Muscovite standards ; but their race doubles in every half century ; and before the year 1900, one hundred millions of men will be ready to pour from the frozen plains of Scythia on the plains of central Asia and southern Europe. Occasional events may check, or for a while turn aside the wave; but its ulti- mate progress in these directions is certain and irresistible. Before two centuries are over, Mahometanism will be banished from Turkey, Asia Minor, and Persia, and a 380 M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. hundred millions of Christians will be settled in the regions noAY desolated by tlie standards of the Prophet. Their advance is as swift, as unceasing, as that of the British race to the rocky belt of Western America. M. de Tocqueville has pointed out this marvellous coincidence in the tendency of the progress of the two greatest nations now on the earth. " There are, at the present time, two great nations in the world, which seem to tend towards the same end, although thej started from different points, — I allude to the Russians and the Americans. Both of them have grown up unnoticed ; and whilst the attention of mankind was directed elsewhere, they have suddenly assumed a most prominent place among the nations; and the world learned their existence and their greatness at almost the same time. "All other nations seem to have nearly reached their natural limits, and only to be charged with the maintenance of their power ; but these are still in the act of growth : all the others are stopped, or continue to advance with extreme dithculty ; these are proceeding with ease and with celerity along a path to which the human eye can assign no term. The American struggles against the natural obstacles which oppose him ; the adversaries of the Russian are men : the former combats the wilderness and savage life ; the latter, civilisation with all its weapons and its arts : the conquests of the one are therefore gained by the ploughshare ; those of the other by the sword. The Anglo-American relies upon personal interest to accom- plish his ends, and gives free scope to the unguided exertions and common sense of the citizens ; the Russian centres all the authority of society in a single arm ; the principal instrument of the former is freedom, of the latter, servitude. Their starting-point is different, and their courses are not the same ; yet each of them seems to be marked out by the will of Heaven to sway the destinies of half the globe." There is something solemn, and evidently Providential, in this ceaseless advance of the lords of the earth and the sea into the desert regions of the earth. The hand of Almighty Power is distinctly visible, not only in the unbroken advance of both on their respective elements, but in the evident adaptation of the passions, habits, and government of each to the ends for which tliey were severally destined in the designs of nature. Could Russian conquest have ever peopled the dark and untrodden forests of North America, or the desert Savannas of Australasia % Could the passions and the desires of the North have ever led them into the abode of the beaver and the buffalo 1 Never ; for aught that their passions could have done, these regions must have remained in primeval solitude and silence to the end of time. Could Enghsh democracy ever have penetrated the half-peopled, half-clesert regions of Asia, and Christian civilisation, spreading in peaceful activity, have supplanted the Crescent in the original seats of the human race % M. DE TOCQUEVILLE. 381 Never ; the isolated colonist, with his axe and his Bible, would have been swept away bj the Mameluke or the Spahi, and civilisation, in its peaceful guise, would have perished under the squadrons of the Crescent. For aught that democracy could have done for Central Asia, it must have remained the abode of anarchy and misrule to the end of human existence. But peaceful Christianity, urged on by democratic passions, pierced the primeval solitude of the American forests : and warlike Christianity, stimulated by northern conquest, was fitted to subdue Central Asia and Eastern Europe. The Bible and the printing-press con- verted the wilderness of North America into the abode of Christian millions ; the Muscovite battalions, marching under the standard of the Cross, subjugated the already peopled regions of the Mussulman faith. Not without reason, then, did the British navy and the Russian army emerge trium- phant from the desperate strife of the French Revolution ; for on the victory of each depended the destinies of half the globe. Democratic institutions will not, and cannot, exist per- manently in North America. The frightfid anarchy which has prevailed in the southern states, since the great inte- rests dependent on slave emancipation were brought into jeopardy ; the irresistible sway of the majority, and the rapid tendency of that majority to deeds of atrocity and blood ; the increasing jealousy, on mercantile grounds, of the northern and southern states — all demonstrate that the Union cannot permanently hold together, and that the innumerable millions of the Anglo-American race must be divided into separate states, like the descendants of the Gothic conquerors of Europe. Out of this second great settlement of mankind will arise separate kingdoms, and interests, and passions, as out of the first. But democratic habits and desires will still prevail ; and long after necessity and the passions of an advanced stage of civilisation have established firm and aristocratic governments, founded on the sway of property in the old states, republican ambition and jealousy will not cease to impel millions into the great wave that approaches the Rocky Mountains. Democratic ideas will not be moderated in the New World, till they have performed their destined end, and brought the Chris- tian race to the shores of the Pacific. 382 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. Arbitrary institutions will not for ever prevail in tlie Russian empire. As successive provinces and kingdoms are added to their vast dominions — as their sway extends over the regions of the south, the abode of wealth and long- established civilisation, the passion for conquest will expire. Satiety will extinguish this as it does all other desires. With the acquisition of wealth, and the settlement in fixed abodes, the desire of protection from arbitrary power will spring up, and the passion of freedom will arise as it did in Greece, Italy, and modern Europe. Free institu- tions will ultimately appear in the realms conquered by Muscovite, as they did in those won by Gothic valour. But the passions and desires of an earlier stage of existence will long agitate the millions of the Russo-Asiatic race; and after democratic desires have arisen, and free institutions exist in its oldest provinces, the wave of northern conquest will still be pressed on by semi-barbarous hordes from its remoter dominions. Freedom will gradually arise out of security and repose ; but the fever of conquest will not be finally extinguished till it has performed its destined mission, and the standards of the Cross are brought down to the Indian Ocean. The French Revolution was the greatest and the most stupendous event of modern times; it is from the throes consequent on its explosion that all the subsequent changes in human affairs have arisen. It sprang up in the spirit of infidelity; it was early steeped in crime; it reached the unparalleled height of general atheism, and shook all the thrones of the world by the fiery passions which it awakened. What was the final result of this second revolt of Lucifer, the Prince of the Mornino^ ? Was it that a great and durable impression on human affairs was made by the infidel race ? Was St Michael at last chained by the demon ? No ! it was overruled by Almighty Power; on either side it found the brazen walls which it could not pass; it sank in the conflict, and ceased to have any farther direct influence on human affairs. In defiance of all its efforts, the British navy and the Russian army rose invincible above its arms; the champions of Christianity in the East and the leaders of religious freedom in the West came forth, like giants refreshed with wine, from the M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. 383 termination of the iiglit. The infidel race Tvhich aimed at the dominion of the world, served only by their efforts to increase the strength of its destined rulers; and from amidst the ruins of its power emerged the ark which was to carry the tidings of salvation to the Western, and the invincible host which was to spread the glad tidings of the gospel through the Eastern world. Great, however, as were the powers thus let into human affairs, their operation must have been comparatively slow, and their influence inconsiderable, but for another circumstance, which at the same time came into action. But a survey of human affairs leads to the conclusion, that when important changes in the social world are about to take place, a lever is not long of being supplied to work out the prodigy. With the great religious change of the sixteenth century arose the art of printing; with the vast revolutions of the nineteenth, an agent of equal efficacy was provided. At the time when the fleets of England were riding omnipotent on the ocean, at the very moment when the gigantic hosts of infidel and revolutionary power were scattered by the icy breath of winter, steam naviga- tion was brought into action, and an agent appeared upon the theatre of the universe destined to break through the most formidable barriers of nature. In January 1812, not one steam-vessel existed in the world; now, on the Mississippi alone, there are a hundred and sixty. Vain hereafter are the waterless deserts of Persia, or the snowy ridges of the Himalaya — vain the impenetrable forests of America, or the deadly jungles of Asia. Even the death- bestridden gales of the Niger must yield to the force of scientific enterprise, and the fountains of tlie Nile them- selves emerge from the awful obscurity of six thousand years. The great rivers of the world are fast becoming the high- ways of civilisation and religion. The Russian battalions will securely commit themselves to the waves of the Euphrates, and waft again to the plains of Shinar the blessings of regular government and a beneficent faith; remounting the St Lawrence and the Missouri, the British emigrants will carry into the solitudes of the Far West the Bible and the wonders of English genius. Spectators of, or actors in, so marvellous a progress, let us act as becomes 384 M. DE TOCQUEYILLE. men called to such mighty destinies in human affairs. Let us never forget that it is to regulated freedom alone that these wonders are to be ascribed ; and contemplate in the degraded and impotent condition of France, when placed beside these giants of the earth, the natural and deserved result of the revolutionary passions and unbridled ambition which extinguished prospects once as fair, and destroyed energies once as powerful, as those which now direct the destinies of half the globe. v^. / AUTOBIOGRAPHY [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, September 1849] AuTOBiOGEAPHY, when skilfully and judiciously done, is one of the most delightful species of composition of which lite- rature can boast. There is a strong desire in every intelli- gent and well-informed mind to become familiar with the private thoughts, and secret motives of action, of those who have filled the world with their renow^n. We long to learn their early history, to be made acquainted with their first aspirations, to discover how they became so great as they afterwards turned out. Perhaps literature has sustained no greater loss than that of the memoirs which Hannibal wrote of his Hfe and campaigns. From the few fragments of his sayings which Roman admiration or terror has preserved, his reach of thought and statesmanlike sagacity would appear to have been equal to his military talents. Caesar's Com- mentaries have always been admired ; but there is some doubts whether they really were written by the dictator; and, supposing they were, they relate almost entirely to military movements and public events, without giving much insight into private character. It is that which we desire in autobiography : we hope to find in it a window by which we may look into a great man's mind. Plutarch's Lives owe their vast and enduring popularity to the insight into private character which the innumerable anecdotes he has collected of the heroes and statesmen of antiquity aflford ; and the lasting reputation of Boswell's Johnson is mainly to be ascribed to the same cause. Memoires cV Outre Tonvbe. Par M. le Vicomte de Chateaubriand. 4 vols. Paris 1846-9. Raphael. Par M. de Lamartine. VOL. III. 2 B 386 AUTOBIOGEAPHY. Gibbon's autobiogTapliy is the most perfect account of an eminent man's life, from his o^yn hand, which exists in any language. Independent of the interest wliich naturally be- longs to it as the record of the studies, and the picture of the groAYth of the mind of the greatest historian of modern times, it possesses' a peculiar charm from the simplicity with which it is written, and the judgment it displays, conspi- cuous alike in wliat is revealed and wliat is withheld in the narrative. It steers the middle channel so difficult to find, so invaluable when found, between ridiculous vanity on the one side, and affected modesty on the other. We see, from many passages in it, that the author was fully aware of the vast contribution he had made to literature, and the firm basis on which he had built his colossal fame. But he had good sense enough to see that those great qualities were never so likely to impress the reader, as when only cau- tiously alluded to by the author. He knew that vanity and ostentation never fail to make the character in which they predominate ridiculous — if excessive, contemptible ; and that, although the world would thankfully receive all the details, how minute soever, connected with his immortal work, they would not take off his hands any symptom of himself entertaining the opinion of it which all others have formed. It is the consummate judgment with which Gib- bon has given enough of the details connected with the preparation of his works to be interesting, and not enough to be ridiculous, wliich constitutes the great charm, and has occasioned the marked success, of his autobiography. There are few passages in the English language so popular as the well-known ones in which he has recounted the first concep- tion and final completion of his history, which, as models of the kind, as well as passages of exquisite beauty, we can- not refuse ourselves the pleasure of transcribing, the more especially as they will set off, by way of contrast, the faults in some parallel passages attempted by Chateaubriand and Lamar tine. "At the distance of twenty-five j^ears, I can neither forget, nor express the strong emotions which agitated my mind as I first approached and entered the Eternal City. After a sleepless night, I trod Avith a lofty step the ruins of the Forum. Each memorable spot — where Romulus stood, or Tully spoke, or Cai'sar fell — was at once present to my eyes ; and several days of intoxication were lost, or enjoyed, before I could descend to a cool and minute investigation. It was at Rome, on the loth October 17G-i, as AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 387 I sat musiug amidst the ruins of the Capitol, while the barefooted friars were singing vespers in the Temple of Jupiter, that the idea of writing this Decline and Fall of the city first started to my mind. But my original plan was circumscribed to the decay of the city, rather than of the empire ; and though my reading and reflections began to point towards that object, some years elapsed, and several avocations intervened, before I was seriously engaged in the execution of that laborious work." — Life^ p. 198, 8vo edition. Again, the well-known description of the conclusion of his labours : — " I have presumed to mark the moment of conception : I shall now commemorate the hour of my final deliverance. It w\as on the day, or rather night, of the 27th June 1787, between the hours of eleven and twelve, that I wrote the last lines of the last page, in a summer-house in my garden. After laying down my pen, I took several turns in a berceaii^ or covered walk of acacias, wliich commands a prospect of the country, the lake, and mountains. The air was temperate, the sky was serene, the silver orb of the moon was reflected from the waters, and all nature was silent. I will not dissemble the first emotions of joy on recovery of my freedom, and perhaps the establishment of my fame. But my pride was soon humbled, and a sober melancholy was spread over my mind, by the idea that I had taken an everlasting leave of an old and agreeable com- panion ; and that, whatever might be the future fate of my History, the life of the historian must be short and precarious." — X?/e, p. 255, 8vo edition. Hume's account of his own life is a model of perspicuity, modesty, and good sense ; but it is so brief that it scarcely can be called a biography. It is not fifty pages long. The wary Scotch author was well aware how vanity in such compositions defeats its own object : he had too much good sense to let it appear in his pages. Perhaps, however, the existence of such a feeling in the recesses of his breast may be detected in the prominent manner in which he brings forward the discouragement he experienced when the first volume of his History was published, and the extremely limited sale it met with for some time after its first appearance. He knew well how these humble beginnings would be contrasted with its subsequent trium- phant success. Amidst his many great and good qualities, there is none for which Sir Walter Scott was more admir- able than the unafi'ected simplicity and good sense of his character, which led him to continue through life utterly unspotted by vanity, and unchanged by an amount of adulation from the most fascinating quarters, which would probably have turned the head of any other man. Among the many causes of regret which the world has for the 388 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. catastrophes which overshadowed his Latter years, it is not the least that it prevented the completion of that auto- biography w^ith which Mr Lockhart has commenced his Life. His simplicity of character, and the vast number of eminent men with whom he was intimate, as well as the merit of that fragment itself, leave no room for doubt that he would have made a most charming memoir, if he had lived to complete it. This observation does not detract in the slightest degree from the credit justly due to ]\Ir Lockhart, for his admirable Life of his illustrious father- in-law : on the contrary, it forms its highest encomium. The cliarm of that work is mainly owing to its being so imbued with the spirit of the subject, that it may almost be regarded as an autobiography. Continental writers of note have, more than English ones, fallen into that error which is of all others the most fatal in autobiography — inordinate vanity. At the head of all the delinquents of this class we must place Rousseau, whose celebrated Confessions contain a revelation of folly so extreme, vanity so excessive, and baseness so disgraceful, that it would pass for incredible if not proved by the book itself, wdiich is to be found in every library. Not content with affirming, when past fifty, that there was no woman of fashion of whom he might not have made the conquest if be had chosen to set about it,'" he thought fit to entertain the world with all the private details of his life, which the greater prudence of his most indiscreet biographers would have consigned to oblivion. No one who wishes to discredit the Genevese philosopher, need seek in the works of others for the grounds of doing so. Enough is to be found in his own to consign him to eternal execration and contempt. He has told us equally in detail, and with the same air of infantine simplicity, how he committed a theft when in service as a lackey, and permitted an innocent girl, his fellow-servant, to bear the penalty of it ; how he alternately drank the wine in his master's cellars, and made love to his wife; how he corrupted one female bene- factress who had sheltered him in extremity of want, and afterwards made a boast of her disgrace; and abandoned a * " II y a peu dcs femmes, m^nie dans le haut rang, dont je n'eusse fait la conquete si je I'avais enteiiDi'ise." — Biograpliic Uyiivcrselle, ^xxis. 136. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 389 male benefactor wlio fell down in a fit of apoplexy on the streets of Lyons, and left Iiini lying on the pavement, deserted by the only friend whom he had in the world. The author of so many eloquent declamations against mothers neglecting their children, on his own admission, when in easy circumstances, and impelled by no necessity, consigned y^^^ of his natural children to a foundling hospital, w4th such precautions against their being known that he never did or could hear of them again ! Such was his vanity, that he thought the world w^ould gladly feed on the crumbs of this sort which fell from the table of the man rich in genius. His grand theory w^as, that the human mind is born innocent, with dispositions only to good, and that all the evils of society arise from the follies of educa- tion or the oppression of Government. Judging from the picture he has presented of himself, albeit debased by no education but what he himself had afforded, we should say his disposition was more corrupt than has ever been imagined by the most dark-minded and bigoted Calvinist that ever existed. Alfieri was probably as vain in reality as Rousseau; but he knew better how to conceal it. He had not the folly of supposing that he could entertain women by the boastful detail of his conquests over them. He judged wisely, and more like a man who had met with bonnes fortunes, that he would attain more effectually the object of interesting their feelings, by painting their conquests over him. He has done this so fully, so sincerely, and with such eloquence, that he has made one of the most powerful pieces of biography in any language. Its charm consists in the picture he has drawn, with equal truth and art, of a man of the most impetuous and ardent temperament, alternately impelled by the strongest passions which can agitate the breast — love and ambitioTL Born of a noble family, inheritiiig a great fortune, he exhibited an uncommon combination of patrician tastes and feelings with republican principles and aspirations. He w^as a democrat because he knew the great by whom he was surrounded, and did not' know the humble who were removed to a distance. He said this himself, after witnessing at Paris the horrors of the 10th August: — '*' Je connais bien les grands, mais je ne 390 AL^TOBIOGEAPHY. connais pas les petitsf' He drew tlie vices of tlie former from observation, he painted the virtues of tlie latter from imagination. Hence the absurdity and unnatural character of many of his dramas, which, to the inhabitant of our free country, who is familiar with the real working of popular institutions, render them, despite their genius, quite ridicu- lous. But, in the delineation of what passed in his own breast, he is open to no such reproach. His picture of his own feelings is as forcible and dramatic as that of any he has drawn in his tragedies; and it is far more truthful, for it is taken from nature, not an imaginary world of his own creation, having little resemblance to that we see around us. His character and life were singularly calcu- lated to make such a narrative interesting, for never was one more completely tossed about by vehement passions, and abounding with melodramatic incidents. Alternately dreaming over the most passionate attachments, and labour- ing of his own accord at Dante fourteen hours a-day; at one time making love to an English nobleman's wife, and fighting him in the Park, at another driving through France with fourteen blood horses in harness ; now stealing from the Pretender his queen, now striving to emulate Sophocles in the energy of his- picture of the passions, he was himself a living example of the intensity of those feelings which he has so powerfully portrayed in his dramas. It is this variety, joined to the simplicity and candour of the confes- sions, which constitutes the very charm of this very remark- able autobiography. It could have been written by no one but himself; for an ordinary biographer would only have described the incidents of his life, none else could have painted the vehement passions, the ardent aspirations, from which they sprang. From the sketches of Goethe's life which have been pre- served, it is evident that, though probably not less vain than the French philosopher or the Italian poet, his vanity took a different direction from either of theirs. He was neither vain of his turpitudes, like Rousseau, nor of his passions, like Alfieri. His self-love was of a more domestic kind ; it was characterised more by the home-scenes of the Father- land. No one will question the depth of Goethe's know- ledge of the heart, or the sagacity of the light which his AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 391 genius has thrown on the most profound feelings of human nature. But his private life partook of the domestic affec- tions and unobtrusive rest in which it was passed, exempt alike from the grinding poverty which too often impelled the Genevese watchmaker's son into disgraceful actions, or the vehement passions which drove the Italian nobleman into brilliant crimes. Hence his biography exhibits an extraordinary mixture of lofty feelings with puerile simpli- city, of depth of views with childishness, of divine philoso- phy with homely inclinations. Amidst all his enthusiasm and effusions of sentiment, he was as much under the influ- ence as any man of creature-comforts ; and never hesitated to leave the most lofty efforts of the muse, to participate in the substantial advantages of ricji preserves or sweet cakes. This singular mixture arose, in a great measure, from the habits of his life, and the limited circle by which, during the greater part of it, he was surrounded. Living with a few friends in the quiet seclusion of a small German town, the object of almost superstitious admiration to a few females by whom he was surrounded, he became at once a little god of his own and their idolatry, and warmly inclined, like monks all over the world, to the innocent but not very ele- vating pleasures of breakfast and dinner. Mahomet said that he experienced more difficulty in persuading his four wives of his divine mission than all the rest of the world besides ; and this, says Gibbon, was not surprising, for they knew best his weaknesses as a man. Goethe thought, on the same principle, his fame was secure, when he was wor- shipped as a god by his female coterie. He had the highest opinion of his own powers, and of the lofty mission on which he was sent to mankind ; but his self-love was less offensive than that of Rousseau, because it was more unob- trusive. It w^as allied rather to pride than vanity ; and though pride may often be hateful, it is never contemptible. The Life of Lord Byron which jNioore has published leaves no room for doubt, that the latter acted wisely in consigning the original manuscript of the noble poet's auto- biography to the flames. Assuming that a considerable part of that biography is taken from what the noble bard had left of himself, it is evident that a more complete detail of his feehngs and motives of action would have done any- 392 xVUTOBIOGRAPHY. tiling rather than have added to his reputation. In fact, Moore's Life has done more than anjtliing else to lower it. The poetical biographer had thought and sung so much of the passions, that he had forgot in ^yhat light thej are viewed bj the generality of men ; he was so deeply imbued with the spirit of his hero, that he had come to regard his errors and vices as not the least interesting part of his life. That they may be so to that class of readers, unhappily too extensive, who are engaged in similar pursuits, is probably true ; but how small a portion do these constitute of the human race, and how weak and inaudible does their applause become, in the progress of time, when compared to the voice of ages ! What has become of the innumerable licentious works whose existence in antiquity has become known from the specimens disinterred in the ruins of Herculaneum ? Is there one of them which has taken its place beside the Lives of Plutarch f Whatever is fetid, however much prized at the moment, is speedily sunk in tlie waves of time. Nothing permanently floats down its stream but what is buoyant from its elevating tendency. Boswell's Life of Johnson is so replete with the sayings and thoughts of the intellectual giant, whom it was so much his object to elevate, even above his natural Patagonian stature, that it may be regarded as a sort of autobiography, dictated by the sage in his moments of abandon to his devout worshipper. It is not going too far to say, that it is among the most popular books in the English language. Johnson's reputation now mainly rests on that biography. No one now reads the Rambler or the Idler — few the Lives of the Poets, interesting as they are, and admirable as are the criticisms on our greatest authors which they contain. But Boswell's Life of Johnson is in everybody's hands ; you will hear the pithy sayings, the admirable reflections, the saga- cious remarks it contains, from one end of the world to the other. The secret of this astonishing success is to be found in the caustic tone, sententious brevity, and sterling good sense of Johnson, and the inimitable accuracy, faithful memory, and almost infantine simplicity of his biographer. From the unbounded admiration with which he was inspired for the sage, and the faithful memory with which he was gifted, he was enabled to commit to paper, almost as they AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 393 were delivered, those admirable sayings which have ever since been the delight and admiration of the world. We almost live w^ith the members of the Literary Club ; we liear their divers sentiments, and can almost conceive their tones of voice. We see the oioantic form of the sao-e towering above his intellectual compeers. Burke said that Johnson was greater in conversation than writing, and greater in Boswell than either ; and it is easy to conceive that this must have been the case. The Life contains all the admirable sayings, verbatim as they were delivered, and without the asperity of tone and manner which formed so great a blot in the original deliverer. Johnson's sayings were of a kind which were susceptible of being accurately transferred, and with full effect, to paper, because they were almost all reflections on morals, men, or manners, which are of universal application, and come home to the senses of mankind in every age. In this respect they were much more likely to produce an impression in biography than the conversation of Sir Walter Scott, which, Iiowever interesting to those who heard it, especially for the first time, consisted chiefly of anecdotes and stories, great part of the charm of which consisted in the mode of telhng and expression of the countenance, which, of course, could not be transferred to paper. But it is not every eminent man who is so fortunate as to find a biographer like Boswell, who, totally forgetful of self, recorded for posterity, with inimitable fidelity, all the sayings of his hero. Nor is it many men who would bear so faithful and searching an exposure. Johnson, like every other man, had his failings ; but they were those of preju- dice or manner, rather than morals or conduct. We wish we could say that every other eminent literary man was equally immaculate, or that an entire disclosure of character would, in every case, reveal no more weaknesses or failings than have been brought to light by BoswelFs faithful chro- nicle. We know that every one is liable to err, and that no man is a hero to his valet-de-chamhre. But being aware of all this, we were not prepared for the immense mass of Aveaknesses, follies, and errors, which have been brought to liglit by the indiscreet zeal of biographers, in the character of many of our ablest literary, poetical, and philosophical 394 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. characters. Certainly, if we look at the details of their private lives, these men of literary celebrity have had little title to set up as the instructors, or to call themselves the benefactors of mankind. From the days of Milton, whose divine genius was so deeply tarnished by the asperity of his feelings, and the unpardonable license in controversy which he permitted to his tongue, to those of Lord Byron, who scandalised his country and the world by the undisguised profligacy of his private life, the biography of literary men, with a few brilliant exceptions — in the foremost of which we must place Sir Walter Scott — consists in great part of a series of follies, weaknesses, or faults, which it would be well for their memory could they be buried in oblivion. We will not say that the labours of their biographers have been the Massacre of the Innocents, for truly there were very few innocents to massacre ; but we will say that they have, in general, done more to degrade those they intended to elevate, than the envenomed hostility of their worst ene- mies. We forbear to mention names, which might give pain to many respectable persons still alive. The persons alluded to, and the truth of the observation, will be at once understood and admitted by every person acquainted with the literary history of France and England during the last century. Vanity and jealousy — vanity of themselves, jealousy of others — are the great failings which have hitlierto tarnished the character and disfigured the biography of literary men.. We fear it is destined to continue the same to the end of tlie world. The qualities which contribute to their great- ness, which occasion their usefulness, which insure their fame, are closely allied to failings which too often disfigure their private lives, and form a blot on their memory, when indiscreetly revealed in biography, either by themselves or others. Genius is almost invariably united to susceptibility ; and this temperament is unhappily too apt to run into irritability. No one can read Disraeli's essay on The Literary Character, the most admirable of his many admir- able works, without being convinced of that. Celebrity of any sort is the natural parent of vanity, and this weakness is in a peculiar manner fostered in poets and romance writers, because their writings interest so warmly the fair. AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 395 wlio form the great dispensers of general fame, and convey it in the most flattering form to the author. It woukl per- haps be unjust to women to say that poets and novelists share in their weaknesses ; but it is certain that their dispo- sition is, in general, essentially feminine, and that, as they attract the admiration of the other sex more strongly than any other class of writers, so they are liable in a peculiar degree to the failings, as well as distinguished by tlie excel- lencies, by which their female admirers are characterised. We may regret that it is so : we may lament that we can- not find poets and romancers who to the genius of Byron, or the fancy of Moore, unite the sturdy sense of Johnson, or the simplicity of character of Scott ; but it is to be feared such a combination is as rare, and as little to be looked for in general life, as the union of the strength of the war-horse to the fleetness of the racer, or the courage of the mastiff to the delicacy of the greyhound. Adam Smith long ago pointed out the distinction between those who serve and those who amuse mankind ; and the difference, it is to be feared, exists not merely between the philosopher and the opera-dancer, but betvreen the instructors of men in every department of thought, and those whose genius is devoted rather to the pleasing of the eye, the melting of the feelings, or the kindling of the imagination. Yet this observation is only generally, not universally, true ; and Sir Joshua Reynolds remains a memorable proof that it is possible for an artist to unite the hidiest orenius and most imao^inative power of mind to the wisdom of a philosopher, the liberality of a gentleman, the benevolence of a Christian, and the simplicity of a child. "7 l ' We are not at all surprised at the intoxication which seizes the literary men and artists whose genius procures for them the favour or admiration of women. Everybody knows it is the most fascinating and transporting flattery which the mind of man can receive. But we confess we are sur- prised, and that too not a little, at the want of sense which so frequently makes men even of the highest abilities mar the influence of their own genius, and detract from the well- earned celebrity of their own productions, by the indiscreet display of this vanity, which the applause they have met with has produced in their minds. These gentlemen are 396 AUTOBIOGEAPHY. charmed with the incense tliej have received, and of course desirous to augment it, and extend the circle from which it is to be drawn. Well, that is their object ; let us consider what means they take to gain it. These consist too often in the most undisguised display of vanity in their conduct, manner, and conversation. Is this the way likely to aug- ment the admiration which they enjoy so much, and are so solicitous to extend ? Are they not clear-sighted enough to see that, holding this to be their aim, considering female admiration as the object of their aspirations, they cannot in any way so effectually mar their desires as by permitting the vanity, which the portion of it they have alreacly received has produced, to appear in their manner or conversation ? Are they so little versed in the female heart as not to know that as self-love acts, if not in a stronger at least in a more conspicuous way in them than in the other sex, so there is nothing which repels them so effectually as any display of that vanity in men which they are all conscious of in them- selves, and nothing attracts them so powerfully as that self- forgetfulness which, estimable in all, is in a peculiar manner graceful and admirable wdien it is met with in those whom none others can forget '? Such a quality is not properly modesty — that is the retiring disposition of those who have not yet won distinction. No man who has done so is ignorant of it, as no woman of beauty is insensible to her charms. It is more nearly allied to good sense, and its invariable concomitant — a due reo-ard for the feelino^s of others. It not unfrequently exists in the highest degree in those who have the strongest inward consciousness of the services they have rendered to mankind. No man was more unassuming than Kepler, but he wrote in reference to his great discoveries, and the neglect they at first met with, " I may vrell be a century without a reader, since God Almighty has been six thousand years w^ithout such an observer as I."" Yet is this universally felt to have been no unworthy effusion of vanity, but a noble expression of great services rendered by one of his most gifted creatures to the glory of the Almighty. Such men as Kepler are proud, but not vain, and proud men do not bring their feelings so promi- nently or frequently forward as vain ones ; for pride rests on the consciousness of superiority, and needs no external AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 397 support ; vanity arises from a secret sense of weakness, and thirsts for a perpetual solace from the applause of others. It is in the French writers that this inordinate weakness of literary men is most conspicuous, and in them it exists to such an extent as, on this side of the Channel, to be alto- gether ridiculous. Every Frenchman thinks his life worth recording. It was long ago said that the number of unpub- lished memoirs which exist in France on the war of the League would, if put together, form a large library. If those relating to the war of the Revolution were accumulated, we have no doubt they would fill the BiUiotlieque du Roi. The number already published exceeds almost the dimen- sions of any private collection of books. The composition and style of these memoirs is for the most part as curious, and characteristic of French character, as their number is descriptive of their ruling passion. In the age of tlie reli- gious wars every writer of memoirs seems to have placed himself in the first rank, Henry IV. in the second ; in that of the Revolution, the greater part of the autobiographies scarcely disguise the opinion that, if the first place must be reluctantly conceded to Napoleon Buonaparte, the second must, beyond all question, be assigned to themselves. The Abbe de Pradt expressed the feeling almost every one enter- tained of himself in France, not the sentiment of an individual man, when he said, " There was one who over- turned Napoleon, and that man was me." Most persons in this country will exclaim that this statement is overcharged, and that it is incredible that vanity should so generally pervade tlie writers of a whole nation. If they will take the trouble to read Lamartine's Confidences and Raphael, containing the events of his youth, or his Hist aire de la Revolution de 1848, recently published, tliey will find ample confirmation of these remarks ; nor are they less conspicuously illustrated by the more elaborate Memoires d! Outre Tomhe of Chateaubriand. One thing is very remarkable, and forcibly illustrates the marked difference in this respect between the character of the French and the Enolish nation. In France all memoirs assume the form of autobiographies : and so general is the thirst for that species of composition that, where a man of any note has not compiled his own life, his papers are put 398 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. into tlie hands of sonic skilful bookmaker, who speedily dresses them up in the form of an attractive autobiography. This was done with the papers of Brissot, Robespierre, Marshal Ney, Fouche, and a great many others, all of which appeared with the name of their authors, and richly stored with these private papers, though it was morally certain that they could not by possibility have written their own lives. In England nothing of the kind is attempted. Scarcely any of the eminent men in the last age have left their own memoirs ; and the papers of the most remarkable of them have been published without any attempt at biography. Thus we have the Wellington Papers, the Marlhoroiujli Papers, the Nelson Papers, the Castlereagh Pajyers, pub- lished without any autobiography, and only a slight sketch, though in all these cases very ably done, of the author's life by their editor. The lives of the other eminent men of the last age have been given by others, not themselves : as that of Pitt, by Tomline and Gilford ; that of Fox, by Trotter ; that of Sheridan, by Moore ; that of Lord Eldon, by Twiss ; that of Lord Sidmouth, by Pellew. There is more here than an accidental diversity : there is a difference arising from a difference of national character. The Englishmen devoted their lives to the public service, and bestowed not a thought on its illustration by themselves ; the French mainly thought of themselves when acting in the public service, and considered it chiefly as a means of elevation and self-laudation to themselves. In justice to the literary men of France, however, it must be stated that, of late years at least, they have been exposed to an amount of temptation, and of food for their self-love, much exceeding anything previously seen among men, and which may go far to account for the extraordinary vanity which they have everywhere evinced. In England, literary distinction is neither the only nor the greatest passport to celebrity. Aristocratic influences remain, and still possess the deepest hold of the pubHc mind ; statesmen exist, whose daily speeches in parliament render their names as houseliold words. Fashion exercises an extraordinary and almost inexplicable sway, especially over the fairest part of creation. How celebi-ated soever an author may be, he will in London soon be brought to his proper level, and a right appreciation AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 399 of his situation. He will see himself at once eclipsed bj an old nobleman, whose name is fraught with historic glorj ; bj a joung marquis, who is an object of solicitude to the mothers and daughters in the room ; by a parliamentary orator, who is beginning to acquire distinction in the senate house. We hold this state of things to be eminently faTOurable to the right character of literary men : for it saves them from trials before which, it is all but certain, both their good sense and their virtue would succumb. But in Paris this salutary check upon individual vanity and pre- sumption is almost entirely awanting. The territorial aris- tocracy is confiscated and destroyed ; titles of honour are abolished ; historic names are almost forgotten in the cease- less whirl of present events ; parliamentary orators are in general unpopular, for they are for the most part on the side of power. Nothing remains but the government of mind. The intellectual aristocracy is all in all. It makes and unmakes kings alternately ; produces and stops revolutions ; at one time calls a new race to the throne, at another consigns them with disgrace to foreign lands. Cabinets are formed out of the editors of newspapers, inter- mingled with a few bankers, wdiom the public convulsions })ave not yet rendered insolvent ; prime ministers are to be found only among successful authors. Thiers, the editor of the National and the historian of the Revolution ; Guizot, the profound professor of history ; Villemain, the eloquent annalist of French literature ; Lamartine, the popular traveller, poet, and historian, have been the alternate prime ministers of France since the revolution of 1830. Even the great name of Napoleon cannot save his nephew from the irksomeness of bending to the same necessity. He named Thiers his prime minister at the time of the Boulogne mis- adventure, he is caressing him now in the salons of the Elysee Bourbon. Successful authors thus in France are surrounded with a halo, and exposed to influences, of which in this country w^e cannot form a conception. They unite in their persons the fame of Mr Fox and the lustre of Sir Walter Scott ; often the political power of ^Ir Pitt with the celebrity of Lord Byron. Whether such a concentration is favourable either to their present utility or lasting fame, and whether the best school to train authors to be the instructors 400 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. of the ^^'orld is to be found in that Avhich exposes them to the combined influence of its greatest temptations, are ques- tions on which it is not necessaiy now to enter, but on ^Yhich posterity will probably have no difficulty in coming to a con- clusion. But while we fully admit that these extraordinary circum- stances, unparalleled in the past history of the world, go far to extenuate the blame which must be thrown on the French writers for their extraordinary vanity, they will not entirely exculpate them. Ordinary men may well be carried away by such adventitious and flattering marks of their power ; but we cannot accept such an excuse from the first men of the age — men of the clearest intellect, and the greatest acquisitions — ^whose genius is to cliarm, whose wisdom is to instruct the w^orld through every succeeding age. If the teachers of men are not to be above the follies and weak- nesses which are general and ridiculous in those of inferior capacity, where are we to look for such an exemption '? It is a poor excuse for the overweening vanity of a Byron, a Goethe, a Lamartine, or a Chateaubriand, that a similar weakness is to be found in a jMadame Grisi or a Made- moiselle Cerito, in the first cantatrice or most admired balle- rina of the day. We all know that the professors of these charming arts are too often intoxicated by the applause which they meet with ; wx excuse or overlook this weakness from respect due to their genius and their sex. But we know, at tlie same time, that there are some exceptions to the general frailty ; and in one enchanting performer, our admiration for talents of the very highest order is enhanced by respect for the simplicity of character and generosity of disposition with which they are accompanied. We desiderate in the men who aspire to direct the thoughts of the world, and have received from nature talents equal to the task, the unaffected singleness of heart, and sterling good sense, wdiich we admire, not less than her admirable powers, in Made- moiselle Jenny Lind. The faults, or rather frailties, we have alluded to, are in an especial manner conspicuous in two of the most remark- able writers of France of the present century — Lamartine and Chateaubriand. There is some excuse for the vanity of these illustrious men. They have both acquired an endur- AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 401 ing fame — their names are known all over the world, and will continue to be so while the French language is spoken on the earth ; and thej have both, bj their literary talents, been elevated to positions far beyond the rank in societv to which they were born, and whicli might well make an ordi- nary head reel from the giddy precipices with which it is surrounded. Chateaubriand powerfully aided in crushing Napoleon in 1814, when Europe in arms surrounded Paris : with still more honourable constancy he had resisted him in 1804, when, in the plenitude of his power, he executed the Duke d'Enghien. He became ambassador to London for the Restoration — minister of foreign affairs, and representative of France at the Congress of Verona. He it was who pro- jected and carried into execution the French invasion of the Peninsula in 1823, the only successful expedition of the Restoration. Lamartine's career, if briefer, has been still more dazzling. He aided largely in the movement which overthrew Louis Philippe ; by the force of his genius he obtained the mastery of the movement, "struggled with democracy when it was strongest, and ruled it when it was wildest;" and had the glory, by his single courage and energy, of saving the character of the revolution from blood- shed, and coercing the Red Republicans in the very tumult of their victory. He has since fallen from power, less from any known delinquencies imputed to him, than from the inherent fickleness of the French people, and the impossi- bility of their submitting, for any length of time, to the lead of a single individual. The autobiography of two such men cannot be other than interesting and instructive in the Ijighest degree ; and if we see in them much which we in England cannot altogether understand, and which we are accustomed to stigmatise with the emphatic epithet "French," there is much also in them which candour must respect, and an equitable spirit admire. The great thing which characterises tliese memoirs, and is sufficient to redeem a multitude of vanities and frailties, is the elevated and chivalrous spirit in which they are com- posed. In this respect they are a rehc, we fear, of the olden time ; a remnant of those ancient days which Mr Burke has so eloquently described in his portrait of Marie Antoinette. That is the spirit which pervades the breasts YOL. III. 2 C 402 AUTOBIOGEAPHY. of these illustrious men ; and therefore it is that we respect them, and forgive or forget many weaknesses which would otherwise be insupportable in their autobiographies. It is a spirit, however, more akin to a former era than the pre- sent ; to the age which produced the crusades, more than that which gave birth to railways ; to the days of Godfrey of Bouillon, rather than those which raised a monument to ]\Ir Hudson. We are by no means convinced, however, that it is not the more likely to be enduring in the future ages of the world ; at least we are sure it will be so, if the sanguine anticipations everywhere formed by the apostles of the movement of the future improvement of the species are destined in any degree to be realised. Although, however, the hearts of Chateaubriand and Lamartine are stamped with the impress of chivalry, and the principal charm of their writings is owing to its generous spirit, yet we should err greatly if we imagined that they have not shared in the influences of the age in which they lived, and become largely imbued with the more popular and equalising notions which have sprung up in Europe during the last century. They could not have attained the political power which they have both wielded if they had not done so ; for no man, be his genius what it may, will ever acquire a practical lead among men, unless his opinions coincide in the main with those of the majority by whom he is surrounded. Chateaubriand's earliest work, written in London in 1793 — the Essai Historiqiie — is, in truth, rather of a republican and sceptical tendency ; and it was not till he had travelled in America, and inhaled a nobler spirit amid the sohtudes of nature, that the better parts of his nature regained their ascendency, and his fame was established on an imperishable foundation by the publication of Atala et Rene and the Genie clu Christianisme. Throughout his whole career, the influence of his early liberal principles remained conspicuous : albeit a royalist, he was the steady supporter of the freedom of the press, and the extension of the elective suff^rage ; and he kept aloof from the government of Louis Philippe, less from aversion to the semi-revolutionary spirit in which it was cradled, than from an honourable fidelity to misfortune, and horror at the selfish corrupt multitude by which it was soon surrounded. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 403 Lainartine's republican principles are universally known. Although descended of a noble family, and largely imbued with feudal feelings, he aided in the revolt which overturned the throne of Louis Philippe in February 1848, and acquired lasting renown by the courage with which he combated the sanguinary spirit of the Red Republicans, when minister of foreign affairs. Both are chivalrous in heart and feeling, rather than opinions ; and they thus exhibit curious and instructive instances of the fusion of the moving principle of the olden time with the ideas of the present, and of the manner in which the true spirit of nobility, forgetfulness of self, can accommodate itself to the varying circumstances of society, and float, from its buoyant tendency, on the surface of the most fetid stream of subse- quent selfishness. In two works recently published by Lamartine, Les Confidences and Raphael, certain passages in his autobio- graphy are given. The first recounts the reminiscences of his infancy and childhood ; the second, a love-story in his twentieth year. Both are distinguished by the peculiarities, in respect of excellencies and defects, which appear in his other writin^rs. On tlie one hand, we have an ardent imao^i- nation, great beauty of language, a generous heart, the true spirit of poetry, and uncommon pictorial powers. On the other, an almost entire ignorance of human nature, extra- ordinary vanity, and that susceptibihty of mind which is more nearly allied to the feminine than the masculine character. Not but that Lamartine possesses great energy and courage : his conduct, during the revolution of 1848, demonstrates that he possesses these qualities in a very high degree ; but that the ardour of his feelings leads him to act and think like women, from their impulses rather than the sober dictates of reason. He is a devout optimist, and firm believer in the innocence of human nature, and indefinite perfectibility of mankind under the influence of republican institutions. Like all other fanatics, he is wholly inac- cessible to the force of reason, and altogether beyond the reach of facts, how strong or convincing soever. Accordingly, he remains to this hour entirely convinced of the perfecti- bility of mankind, although he has recounted, with equal truth and force, that it was almost entirely owing to his own 404 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. courage and energy that the revolution was prevented, in its very outset, from degenerating into bloodshed and massacre ; and a thorougli believer in the ultimate sway of pacific institutions, although he owns that, despite all his zeal and eloquence, the whole Provisional Government, with himself at its head, would on the 16th April have been guillotined or thrown into the Seine, but for the determination and fidelity of three battalions of the Garde Mobile whom Cliangarnier volunteered to arrange in all the windows and avenues of the Hotel de Ville, when it was assailed by a column of thirty thousand furious revolutionists. Raphael is the most remarkable and interesting of these sketches of Lamartine's early life. Opinions will probably be generally divided upon it, as they are at present, so long as he continues to be read in the world. The young, the ardent, the enthusiastic, those who have felt or feel the pas- sions of life, will ever dwell on it with deep interest, and class some passages in it with those well-known ones in Romeo and Jidiet, or Gorinne, which have depicted with most force and power the master passion of the human breast. The middle aged, the elderly, the cautious, the worldly, the great mass, in short, of ordinary men, will regard it as a senseless rhapsody, French in its character, high-flown in its language, fit only to be laughed at by all persons of judgment. The greater part of the critics who have hitherto noticed this remarkable work in the daily press have belonged to tlie latter class, and treated it with unmeasured severity. But experience has taught us that minorities are generally in the right in the first estimation of books, and that the majority in the end generally comes round to their side ; and although none are further removed than we are from the visions of Lamartine as to the perfectibility of human nature, we have an undoubting confidence in the buoyant tendency, in the long run, of works of an elevated and generous character, which this unquestionably is, how far soever it may be removed from the worldly feelings of a selfish age. As a specimen of the author's style, we translate the following passage, in which he recounts his parting walk, in the gardens of the park of Mousseaux, with the object of his attachment : — '' We consecrated to our farewells the day which preceded my departure. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 405 We wished to bid each other adieu, not in the shade of walls which stifle the soul, or in the eyes of others who share not in the affections, but under the heavens, in the light of the sun, in solitude and silence. Nature asso- ciates itself to the finest sensations of the soul. She seems to understand, to sympathise with them, like an invisible confidant. She bears them to heaven, where they are received and rendered divine. "That magnificent park, planted with aged elms, interspersed with meadows, watered with streams, spiritualised by monuments, columns, ruins, images of the past, anticipations of the future, had that day no other spectators save ourselves, but the insects and the birds. Alas ! never were its verdant banks and beauteous leaves gazed on by more mournful eyes. The more that the sky was warm and resplendent — the more that the light and the shade deliciously combated on the grass in the breath of stmimer eve, like the shadow of a bird's wing which pursues another — the more that the nightingales warbled their melodious notes in the air — the more the waters reflected, in their polished mirror, the flocks of aquatic birds which floated on their surface — the more was that gaiety sad to us, and the more did the dazzling brilliancy of that summer evening contrast with the sombre cloud which weighed upon our hearts. In vain Ave strove to deceive our- selves by exclamations on the beauty of the scene, the lustre of the flowers, the perfume of the air, the depth of the shadows, the solitude of those sites where a world of love might have been shut up in ecstasy. AVe cast on these objects, from a mutual wish to distract our minds, a passing gaze ; but our eyes soon sank upon the earth. Our voices even, while they re-echoed the vain sounds of joy and admiration, betrayed the void of words and the absence of our souls. They were far distant. " In vain we seated ourselves alternately at the foot of perfumed lilac trees, under the shadow of lofty cedars, on the remains of columns, on the bauks of the numberless waters which were scattered around, to pass the long hours of our last interview. Scarcely had we chosen one seat before a vague disquietude compelled us to rise and choose another. Here it was the shade, there the light ; in one place the inopportune sound of a cascade, in another the ceaseless warbling of a nightingale over our heads, which rendered all that enjoyment sad, and all those beauties unsupportable. When the heart is sad in the breast, Nature herself is felt as oppressive — Eden itself would be a pain the more, if it was the scene of the separation of two lovers. "At last, tired of wandering without finding a refuge from ourselves during an hour, we sat down near a little bridge over a stream, at a little distance from each other, as if the very sound of our respirations would have been felt as inopportune, or as if a secret instinct taught us to conceal mutually from each other the half- stifled sighs which escaped from our bosoms. We gazed for long in silence on the water reflecting the verdant banks. As we looked on the body of a young swallow, which had been drowned in attempting to drink in a marble basin above before its wings were sufficiently strong to sustain its weight, another swallow, doubtless its mother, flew backwards and forwards a hundred times under the arch, uttering piercing cries — we looked at each other in silence — our eyes met ; we turned them aside and burst into tears. We tried sometimes to speak, but our hearts were full, and we could not. At length we gave way to nature, and continued to shed, during the short time we sat together, silent tears. The earth received them, the air carried them away, the rays of the sun dried them up, but they were numbered in Heaven, Not a drop of the cup of anguish remained untasted by us when we rose up, without speaking, without seeing each other through our over- flowing eyes. Such were our adieus : a fimeral image, an ocean of tears, an eternal silence. AVe separated at length without looking at each othei\ lest our firmness should melt away altogether under the intensity of such a gaze. 406 AUTOBIOGKAPHY. That garden, the last scene of our love and of our adieus, will never be effaced from my memory; but it shall never again feel the trace of my steps." — P. 348, 8vo edition. Chateaubriand is more a man of the world than Lamartine. He has passed througli a life of greater yicissitudes, and been much more frequently brought into contact with men in all ranks and gradations of society. He is not less chivalrous than Lamartine, but more practical ; his style is less pictorial but more statesmanlike. The French of all shades of political opinion agree in placing him at the head of the writers of the last age. This high position, however, is owing rather to the detached passages than the general tenor of his writings, for their average style is hardly equal to such an encomium. He is not less vain than Lamartine, and still more egotistical — a defect which, as already noticed, he shares with nearly all the writers of autobiography in France, but which appears peculiarly extraordinary and lamentable in a man of such talents and acquirements. His life abounded with strange and romantic adventures, and its vicissitudes would have furnished a ricli field for biography even to a writer of less imaginative powers. He was born on the 4th September 1768 — the same year with Napoleon — at an old melancholy chateau on the coast of Brittany, washed by the waves of the Atlantic ocean. His mother, like those of almost all other eminent men recorded in history, was a very remarkable woman, gifted with a prodigious memory and an ardent imagination — qualities which she transmitted in a very high degree to her son. His family was very ancient, going back to the year 1000 ; but, till illustrated by Francois Rene, who has ren- dered it immortal, the Chateaubriands lived in unobtrusive privacy on their paternal acres. After receiving the rudi- ments of education at home, he was sent at the age of seventeen into the army ; but the Revolution having soon after broken out, and his regiment revolted, he quitted the service and came to Paris, where he witnessed the horrors of the storming of the Tuileries on the 10th of August, and the massacre in the prisons on 2d September. Many of his nearest relations — in particular his sister-in-law, Madame de Chateaubriand, and sister, Madame Rozambo — were executed along with Malesherbes, shortly before tlie fall of AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 407 Robespierre. Obliged now to fly to England, he lived for some years in London in extreme poverty, supporting him- self by his pen. It was there he wrote his earliest and least creditable work, the Essai Historique. Tired of such an obscure and monotonous life, however, he set out for Ame- rica, with the Quixotic design of discovering by land journey the North-west Passage. He failed in that attempt, for which, indeed, he had no adequate means ; but he dined with Washington, and in the solitudes of the Far West imbibed many of the noblest ideas, and found the subjects of several of the finest descriptions, which have since adorned his works. Finding that there was nothing to be done in the way of discovery in America, he returned to England. Afterwards he went to Paris, and there composed his greatest works, Atala et Rene and the Genie du Ckristian- isme, which soon acquired a colossal reputation, and raised the author to the highest pinnacle of literary fame. Napoleon, whose piercing eye discerned talent wherever it was to be found, now selected him for the public service in the diplomatic line. He gives the following interesting account of the first and only interview he had with that extraordinary man, in the saloon of his brother Lucien : — " I was in the gallery when Napoleon entered ; his appearance struck me with an agreeable surprise. I had never previously seen him but at a dis- tance. His smile was sweet and encouraging ; his eye beautiful, especially from the way in which it was overshadowed by the eyebrows. He had no charlatanism in his looks, nothing aftected or theatrical in his manner. The Genie du Christianisme^ which at that time teas making a great deal ofnoise^ had produced its effect on Xapoleon. A vivid imagination animated his cold policy ; he would not have been what he was if the Muse had not been there ; reason in him worked out the ideas of a poet. All great men are composed of two natures — for they must be at once capable of inspiration and action — the one conceives, the other executes. " Buonaparte saw me, and knew me I know not how. When he moved towards me, it was not known whom he sought. The crowd opened ; every one hoped the First Consul would stop to converse with him ; his air showed that he was irritated at these mistakes. I retired behind those around me ; Buonaparte suddenly raised his voice, and called out, "Monsieur de Chateau- briand." I then remained alone in front ; for the crowd instantly retired, and re-formed in a circle around us. Buonaparte addressed me with sim- plicity, without questions, preamble, or compliments. He began speaking about Egypt and the Arabs, as if I had been his intimate friend, and he had only resumed a conversation already commenced betwixt us. ' I was always struck,' said he, ' when I saw the Sheiks fall on their knees in the Desert, turn towards the East, and touch the sand with their foreheads. What is that unknown thing which they adore in the East ?' Speedily then passing to another idea, he said, ' Christianity ! the Idealogues wished to reduce it to a system of astronomy ! Suppose it were so, do they suppose they would 408 AUTOBIOGEAPHY. render Christianity little? Were Christianity only an allegory of the move- ment of the spheres, the geometry of the stars, the esprits forts would have little to say : despite themselves, they have left sufficient grandeur to VInfame.'' * " Buonaparte immediately withdrew. Like Job in the night, I felt as if a spirit had passed before me ; the hairs of my head stood up. I did not know its countenance ; but I heard its voice like a little whisper. "My days have been an uninterrupted succession of visions. Hell and heaven continually have opened under my feet, or over my head, without my having had time to sound their depths, or withstand their dazzling. I have met once, and once only, on the shores of the two worlds, the man of the last age, and the man of the new — Washington and Kapoleon — I con- versed a few moments with each — both sent me back to solitude — the first by a kind wish, the second by an execrable crime. " I remarked that, in moving through the crowd, Buonaparte cast on me looks more steady and penetrating than he had done before he addressed me. I followed him with my eyes. ' Who is that gi^eat mau who cares not For conflagrations.'" + — Vol. iv. 118-121. This passage conveys a just idea of Chateaubriancrs Memoirs : his eleyatiou of mind, his ardent imagination, his deplorable vanity. In justice to so eminent a man, how- ever, we transcribe a passage in which the nobleness of his character appears in its true lustre, untarnished by the weaknesses which so often disfio^ure the character of men of fijenius. We allude to his couras^eous throwins; down the gauntlet to Napoleon, on occasion of the murder of the Duke d'Enghien : — " Two days before the fatal 20th March, I dressed myself before taking leave of Buonaparte, on my way to the Valais, to which I had received a diplomatic mission ; I had not seen him since the time when he had spoken to me at the Tuileries. The gallery where the reception was going on was full ; he was accompanied by Murat and his aide-de-camp. When he ap- proached me, I was struck with an alteration in his countenance : his cheeks were fallen in, of a livid hue ; his eyes stern ; his colour pale ; his air sombre and terrible. The attraction which had formerly drawn me towards him was at an end : instead of awaiting, I fled his approach. He cast a look towards me, as if he sought to recognise me, moved a few steps towards me, turned, and disappeared. Returned to the Hotel de France, I said to several of my friends, ' Something strange, which I do not know, must have happened : Buonaparte could not have changed to such a degree unless he had been ill.' Two days after, at eleven in the forenoon, I heard a man cry in the streets, ' Sentence of the military commission convoked at Yincennes, which has condemned to the pain of Death Louis Antoine Henri de Bourbon, born 2d August 1772, at Chantilly.' That cry fell on me like a clap of thunder : it changed my life as it changed that of Xapoleon. I returned home, and said to Madame de Chateaubriand — ' The Duke d'Enghien has just been shot.' I sat down to a table and began to write my resignation — Madame de Chateaubriand made no opposition : she had a great deal of courage. She * Alludmg to the name VInfame^ given by the King of Pi-ussia, dAlembert, and Diderot, in their coiTespondences, to the Christian religion, t Dante. AUTOBIOGEAPHY. 409 was fully aware of my danger : the trial of ^Moreaii and Georges Cadoudal was going on : the lion had tasted blood : it was not the moment to uTitate him."— Vol. iv. 228-229. After this honourable step, which happilj passed without leading to Chateaubriand's being shot, he travelled to the East, where he visited Greece, Constantinople, the Holj Land, and Egypt, and collected the materials which have formed two of his most celebrated works, Ultineraire d Jerusalem, and Les Martyres. He returned to France, but did not appear in public life till the Allies conquered Paris in 1814, when he composed with extraordinary rapidity his famous pamphlet entitled Buonaparte and the Bourbons, which had so powerful an eflPect in bringing about the Restoration. The Royalists were now in power, and Chateaubriand was too important a man to be overlooked. In 1821 he was sent as ambassador to London, the scene of his former penury and suffering; in 1823 he was made Minister of Foreign Affairs, and in that capacity projected, and successfully carried through, the expedition to Spain which reseated Ferdinand on the throne of his ancestors ; and he was afterwards the plenipotentiary of France at the Congress of Verona in 1824. He was too liberal a man to be employed by the Administration of Charles X., but he exhibited an honourable constancy to misfortune on occasion of the Revolution of 1830. He was offered the portfolio of Foreign Affairs, if he would abstain from opposition ; but he refused the proposal, made a last noble and eloquent speech in favour of his dethroned sovereign in the Cliamber of Peers, resigned all his pensions and appointments, took his leave of the treacherous Senate, and, withdrawing into privacy, lived in retirement, engaged in literary pursuits, and in the composition or revising of his numerous publica- tions, till his death, which occurred in June 1848. Such a life of such a man cannot be other than interest- ing, for it unites the greatest possible range and variety of events with the reflections of a mind of great power, ardent imagination, and extensive erudition. His autobiography, or Memoires cTOutre Tomhe, as it is called, was accordingly looked for with great interest, which has not been sensibly diminished by the revolution of 1848, which has brought a new set of political actors on the stage. Four volumes only 410 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. liave hitherto been published, but the rest may speedily be looked for, now that the military gOTernment of Prince Louis Napoleon has terminated that of anarchy in France, and permitted literary works, though in sorely diminished numbers, to reappear amongst them. The three first volumes certainly disappointed us : chiefly from the perpetual and offensive vanity which they exhibited, and the number of details, many of them of a puerile or trifling character, which they contained. The fourth volume, however, from which the preceding extracts have been taken, exhibits Chateaubriand, in many places, in his original vigour ; and not less the noble and disinterested acts with which his public life terminated. MICHELET'S FEANCE [FOREIGN AND COLONIAL REVIEW, April 1844] It is a common and very just observation, that modern historical works are not so interesting as those which have been bequeathed to us by antiquity. Even at this distance of time, after two thousand years have elapsed since they were written, the great histories of Greece and Rome still form the most attractive subject of study to all ages. The young find in their heart-stirring legends and romantic incidents, keen and intense delight ; the middle-aged dis- cover in their reflections and maxims the best guide in the ever-changing, but yet ever the same, course of human events ; the aged recur to them with still greater plea- sure, as embodying at once the visions of their youth and the experience of their maturer years. It is not going too far to assert, that in their own style they are altogether inimitable, and that, like the Greek statues, future ages, ever imitating, will never be able to rival them. This remarkable and generally admitted perfection is not to be ascribed, however, to any superior genius in the ancient to the modern writers. History was a different art in Greece and Rome from what it now is. Antiquity had no romances — their histories, based in early times on their ballads and traditions, supplied their place. Narrative with them was simple in event, and single in interest — it related in general the progress of a single city or com- monwealth ; upon that the whole light of the artist required to be thrown : the remainder naturally was placed in shade, or slightly illuminated only where it came in contact with the favoured object. With the exception of Herodotus, who, though the oldest historian in existence, was led by 412 MICHELETS FEAXCE. the vigour of liis mind, his discursive habits, and extensive travelUng, to give, as it were, a picture of the whole world then known — these ancient histories are all the annals of individual towns or little republics. Xenophon, Thucjdides, Sallust, Livj, Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Hahcarnassensis, are all more or less of this character. The mighty genius of Tacitus alone seems to have embraced the design of giving a picture of the vast empire of Rome ; and even in his hands history was still distinguished by its old char- acter — the Forum was still the object of reverential interest — the Palatine Mount embraced the theatre of almost all the revolutions which he has so admirably portrayed; and his immortal work is less a picture of the Roman world under the C?esars, than a delineation of the revolutions of the palace which shook their empire, and the convulsive throes by which they were attended throughout its various provinces. In modern times, a far more dif&cult task awaits the his- torian, and wholly different qualities are required in him who undertakes to perform it. The superior age of the Avorld — the eighteen hundred years which have elapsed since the Augustan age of Roman literature — the discovery of new nations, quarters of tlie globe, and hemispheres, since Livy concluded in one hundred and forty books tlie majestic annals of Roman victories — the close connexion of nations among each other, which have interlaced their story like the limbs of ancient wrestlers — the new sciences wdiich have grown up and come to bear upon human events, with the growth of mankind and the expansion of knowledge — and the prodigious perplexity of transactions, military, poli- tical, and moral, which require to be unravelled and brought in a clear form before the mind of the reader — have ren- dered the task of the historian now as laborious, complicated, and confused, as in former times it was simple, clear, and undivided. Unity of effect — that precious and important object in all the Fine Arts — has been rendered always diffi- cult, sometimes impossible. The story is so complicated, the transactions so various, the interests so diverse, that nothing but the most consummate skill, and incessant atten- tion on the part of the historian to the leading objects of his narrative, can prevent the mind of the reader from being MICHELEt's FRANCE. 413 lost in a boundless sea of detached occurrences. It is not the "tale of Troj divine," nor the narrative of Roman heroism, nor the conquest of Jerusalem, which requires to be recorded ; but the transactions of many different nations, as various and detached from each other as the adventures of the knights-errant in Ariosto. For these reasons history cannot be written now on the plan of the ancients, — and if attempted, it would fail of success. The family of nations has become too large to admit of interest being centred only on one member of it. It is in vain now to draw the picture of the groups of time, by throwing the whole light on one figure, and all the rest in shade. Equally impossible is it to give a mere narrative of interesting events, and cast all the rest overboard. All the world would revolt at such an attempt, if made. The transactions of the one selected would be unintelhgible, if those of the adjoining states were not given. One set of readers w^ould say, "Where are your statistics V Another, " There is no military discussion — the author is evidently no soldier." A third would condemn the book as wanting diplomatic transactions ; a fourth, as destitute of philosophic reflection. The statesman would throw it aside as not con- taining the information he desired ; the scholar as affbrding no clue to contemporary and original authority ; the man of the world, as a narrative not to be relied on, and to which it was hazardous to trust without farther investigation. Women would reject it as less interesting than novels ; men, as not more authentic than a romance. Notwithstanding, however, this great and increasing diffi- culty of writing history in modern times, from the vast addition to the subjects which it embraces and must embrace, the fundamental principles of the art are still the same as they were in the days of Thucydides or Sallust. The figures in the picture are greatly multiplied ; many cross lights disturb the unity of its efi'ect ; infinitely more learn- ing is required in tlie drapery and still life ; but the object of the painter has undergone no change. Unity of effect, singleness of emotion, should still be his great aim : the multiplication of objects from which it is to be produced has increased the difficulty, but not altered the principles of the art. And that this difficulty is not insuperable, but 414 MICHELET's FRANCE. may be overcome by the light of genius directing the hand of industry, is decisively proved by the example of Gibbon's Rome, which, embracing the events of fifteen centuries, and successive descriptions of all the nations which, during that long period, took a prominent part in the transactions of the world, yet conveys a clear and distinct impression in every part to the mind of the reader ; and presents a series of pictures so vivid, and drawn with such force, that the work, more permanently than any romance, fascinates every successive generation. It is commonly said that accuracy and impartiality are the chief requisites in a historian. That they are indis- pensable to his utility or success is indeed certain ; for if the impression once be lost that the author is to be relied on, the value of his production, as a record of past events, is at an end. No brilliancy of description, no magic of eloquence, no power of narrative, can supply the want of the one thing needful — trustworthiness. But fully admitting that truth and justice are the bases of history, there never was a greater mistake than to imao;ine that of themselves they will constitute a historian. They may make a valu- able annalist — a good compiler of materials ; but very dif- ferent qualities are required in the artist who is to construct the edifice. In him we expect the power of combination, the inspiration of genius, the brilliancy of conception, the generalisation of effect. The workman who cuts the stones out of the quarry, or fashions and dresses them into entabla- tures and columns, is a very different man from him who combines them into the temple, the palace, or the cathedral. The one is a tradesman, the other an artist — the first a quarrier, the last a Michael Angelo. Mr Fox arranged the arts of composition thus : — 1. Poetry ; 2. History ; 3. Oratory. That very order indi- cated that the great orator had a just conception of the nature of history, and possessed many of the qualities requi- site to excel in it, as he did in the flights of eloquence. It is, in truth, in its higher departments, one of the fine arts ; and it is the extraordinary difficulty of finding a person who combines the imagination and fervour requisite for eminence in their aerial visions, with the industry and research which are indispensable for the correct narrative of earthly events, MICHELET S FRANCE. 415 wliicli renders great historians so very rare, even in the most brilliant periods of human existence. Antiquity only pro- duced six ; modern times can hardly boast of eight. It is much easier to find a great epic than a great history ; there were many poets in antiquity, but only one Tacitus. Homer himself is rather an annalist than a poet : it is his inimitable traits of nature which constitute his principal charm : the Iliad is a history in yerse. Modern Italy can boast of a cluster of immortal poets and painters ; but the country of Raphael and Tasso has not produced one really great his- tory. The laboured annals of Guicciardini or Davila cannot bear the name ; a ^York, the perusal of which was deemed worse than the fate of a galley-slave, cannot be admitted to take its place with the master-pieces of Italian art.'' Three historians only in Great Britain have by common consent taken their station in the highest rank of historic excellence. Sismondi alone in France has been assigned a place by the side of Gibbon, Hume, and Robertson. This extraordinary rarity of the highest excellence demonstrates the extraor- dinary difficulty of the art, and justifies Mr Fox's assertion, that it ranks next to poetry in the fine arts ; but it becomes the more extraordinary, when the immense number of works written on historical subjects is taken into consideration, and the prodigious piles of books of history which are to be met with in every public library. The greatest cause of this general failure of historical works to excite general attention, or acquire lasting fame, is the want of power of generalisation and classification in the writers. Immersed in a boundless sea of details, of the relative importance of which they were unable to form any just estimate, the authors of the vast majority of these works have faithfully chronicled the events which fell under their notice, but in so dry and uninteresting a manner that they produced no sort of impression on mankind. Except as books of antiquity or reference, they have long since been con- signed to the vault of all the Capulets. They were crushed under their own weight — they were drowned in the flood of their own facts. While they were straining every nerve not * It is reported in Italy, that a galley-slave was offered a commutation of his sentence, if he would read through Guicciardini's AVar of Florence with Pisa. After labouring at it for some time, he petitioned to be sent back to the oar — Si non e vero e bene trbvato. 416 MICHELETS FKAKCE. to deceive their readers, the whole class of those readers quietly slipped over to the other side. They, their merits and their faults, were alike forgotten. It may safely be affirmed, that ninety-nine out of a hundred historical works are consigned to oblivion from this cause. The quality, on the other hand, which distinguishes all the histories which have acquired a great and lasting repu- tation among men, has been the very reverse of this. It consists in the power of tin-owing into the shade the subor- dinate and comparatively immaterial facts, and bringing into a prominent light those only on which subsequent ages love to dwell, from the heroism of the actions recounted, the tragic interest of the catastroplies portrayed, or the important consequences with which they have been attended on the future generations of men. It was thus that Herodotus painted with so much force the memorable events of the Persian invasion of Greece ; and Thucydides, the contest of aristocracy and democracy in the Greek commonwealths ; and Livy, the immortal strife of Hannibal and Scipio in Roman story. No historian ever equalled Gibbon in this power of classification, and of giving breadth of effect ; for none ever had so vast and complicated a series of events to recount, and none ever portrayed them with so graphic and luminous a pen. Observe his great pictures : — the condition of the Roman empire in the time of Augustus — the capture of Constantinople by the Latin crusaders — the rise of Mahommed — the habits and manners of the pastoral na- tions — the disasters of Julian — and the final decay and ruin of the Eternal City. They stand out from the canvass with all the freshness and animation of real life : and seizin cr powerfully on the imagination of the reader, they make an indelible impression, and compensate or cause to be forgotten all the insignificant details of revolutions in the palace of Constantinople, or in the decline of the Roman empire, which necessarily required to be introduced. Struck with the fate of so prodigious a host of historical writers, who had sunk into oblivion from this cause, Voltaire, with his usual vigour and originality, struck out a new style in this department of literature. Discarding at once the whole meagre details, the long descriptions of dress and ceremony, which filled the pages of the old chronicles or MICHELET's FEiXCE. 417 moDkish annalists, he strove to bring history back to what he conceiyecl, and ^Yith reason, was its true object — a striking delineation of the principal events which had occurred, with a picture of the changes of manners, ideas, and principles with which they were accompanied. This was a great im- provement on the jejune narratives of former times ; and proportionally great was the success with which, in the first instance at least, it was attended. While the dry details of Guicciardini, the ponderous tomes of Yillaret or Mezeray, and the tmstworthy quartos of De Thou, slumbered in respectable obscurity on the dusty shelves of the library, the " Siecle de Louis XIV.," the Life of Peter the Great and Charles XII., were on every table, and almost in every boudoir ; and their popular author was elevated to the pinnacle of worldly fame, while his more laborious and industrious predecessors were nigh forgotten by a frivolous age. A host of imitators, as nsual with every original writer, followed in this brilliant and lucrative path ; of whom, Raynal in France, Schiller in Germany, and Watson in England, were the most successful. But it was ere long discovered that this brilliant and shetchy style of history was neither satisfactory to the scholar nor permanently popular with the public. It was amusing ratlier than interesting, brilliant than profound. Its inge- nious authors sprang too suddenly to conclusions — they laid down positions which the experience of the next age proved to be erroneous. It wanted that essential requisite in his- tory, a knowledge of the human heart and a practical acquaintance with men. Above all, it had none of the earnestness of thought, the impassioned expression which springs from deep and sincere conviction, and which is ever found to be the only lasting passport to the human heart. After the first burst of popularity was over, it began to be discovered that these brilliant sketches were not real history, and could never supply its place. They left an immense deal untold, of equal or greater importance than what was told. They gave an amusing, but deceptive, and therefore not permanently interesting, account of the periods they embraced. Men desire something more in reading the narrative of great and important events in past times, than an able sketch of their leading features and brilliant charac- YOL. III. 2 D 418 MICHELEt's FRANCE. ters, accompanied bj perpetual sneers at priests, eulogies on kings, or sarcasms on mankind. This was more particularly the case when the political contests of the eighteenth century increased in vehemence, and men, warmed ^Yith the passions of real life, turned back to the indifferent coolness, the phi- losophic disdain, the ton cUrisoire, with which the most momentous or tragic events had been treated in these gifted but superficial writers. Madame de Stael has said, that when derision has become the prevailing characteristic of the public mind, it is all over with the generous affections or elevated sentiments. She was right, but not for ever — only till men are made to feel in their own persons the sufferings they laugh at in others. It is astonishing how soon that turns derision into sympathy. The '^aristocrats derisoires" emerged from the prisons of Paris, on the fall of Robespierre, deeply affected witli sympathy for human woe. The profound emotions, the dreadful sufferings, the heart- stirring interest of that eventful era, speedily communicated themselves to the style of historical writers ; it at once sent the whole tribe of philosophic and derisory historians over- board. The sketchy style, the philosophic contempt, the calm indifference, the sceptical sneers of Voltaire and his followers, were felt as insupportable by those who had known what real suffering was. There early appeared in the nar- ratives of the French Revolution, accordingly, in the works of Toulongeon, Bertrand de Molleville, the Deux Amis de la Liberte, and Lacretelle, a force of painting, a pathos of narrative, a vehemence of language, which for centuries had been unknown in modern Europe. This style speedily be- came general, and communicated itself to history in all its branches. Tlie passions on all sides were too strongly roused to permit of the calm narratives of former philosophic writers being tolerated ; men had suffered too much to allow them to speak or think with indifference of the sufferings of others. In painting with force and energy, it was soon found that recourse must be had to the original authorities, and, if possible, the eye-witnesses of the events ; all subse- quent or imaginary narrative appeared insipid and lifeless in comparison ; it was like studying the mannerist trees of Perella or Vivares after the vigorous sketches from nature of Salvator or Claude. Thence has arisen the izreat school michelet's feaxce. 419 of modern French history, of which Sismondi was the founder ; and which has since been enriched bj the works of Guizot, Thierry, Barante, Thiers, Mignet, Micliaud, and Michelet : a chister of writers which, if none of them singly equal the masterpieces of English history, presents, taken as a whole, a greater mass of talent in that department than any other country can boast. The poetical mind and pictorial eye of Gibbon had made him anticipate, in the very midst of the philosophic school of Voltaire, Hume, and Robertson, this great change which misfortune and suffering impressed generally upon the next generation. Thence his extraordinary excellence and acknow- ledged superiority, as a delineator of events, to any writer AYho has preceded or followed him. He united the philo- sophy and general views of one age to the brilliant pictures and impassioned story of another. He warmed with the narratives of the Crusaders or the Saracens, he wandered with the Scythians, he wept with the Greeks, he delineated with a painter's hand and a poet's fire the manners of the nations, the features of the countries, the most striking events of the periods which were passed under review ; but, at the same time, he preserved inviolate the unity and general effect of his picture : his lights and shadows maintained their just proportions, and were respectively cast on the proper objects. Philosophy threw a radiance over the mighty maze; and the mind of tlie reader, after concluding his prodigious series of details, dwelt with complacency on its most striking periods, skilfully brought out by the con- summate skill of the artist, as the recollection of a spectator does on any of the magic scenes in Switzerland, in which, amidst an infinity of beautiful objects, the eye is fascinated by the calm tranquillity of the lake, or the rosy hues of the evening glow on the glacier. We speak of Gibbon as a delineator of events : none can feel more strongly, or deplore more deeply, the fatal blindness — the curse of his age — which rendered him so perverted on the subject of religion, and left so wide a chasm in his immortal work, which the profounder thought and wider experience of Guizot has done so much to fill. Considered as calm and philosophic narratives, the histo- ries of Hume and Robertson will remain as standard models 420 michelet's France. for every future age. The just and profound reflections of the former, the inimitable clearness and impartiality ^itli which he has summed up the arguments on both sides, on the most momentous questions which hare agitated England, as well as the general simplicity, uniform clearness, and occasional pathos of his story, must for ever command the admiration of mankind. In vain we are told that he is often inaccurate, sometimes partial ; in vain are successive attacks published on detached parts of liis narrative, by party zeal or antiquarian research : his reputation is undi- minished : successive editions issuing from the press attest the continued sale of his work ; and it continues its majestic course through the sea of time, like a mighty three-decker, which never even condescends to notice the javelins darted at its sides from the hostile canoes which from time to time seek to impede its progress. Robertson's merits are of a different, and, upon the whole, of an inferior kind. Gifted with a philosophic spirit, a just and equal mind, an eloquent and impressive expression, he had not the profound sagacity, the penetrating intellect, which have rendered the observation of Bacon, Hume, and Johnson as enduring as the English language. He had not enjoyed the practical acquaintance with man which Hume acquii'ed by mingling in diplomacy; and without a practical acquaintance with man, no writer, whatever his abilities may be, can rightly appreciate the motives or probable result of human actions. It was this practical collision with public affairs which lias rendered the histories of Thucydides, Sal- lust, and Tacitus so profoundly descriptive of the human heart. Living alternately in the seclusion of a Scotch manse, or at the head of a Scotch university; surrounded by books, respect, and ease, the reverend Principal took an agreeable and attractive, but often incorrect view of human affairs. In surveying the general stream of human events, and drawin^r iust conclusions reo^ardin^ the chano^es of cen- turies, he was truly admirable; and in those respects his first volume of Charles V. may, if we except Guizot's Civi- lisation Europeenne, be pronounced witliout a parallel in the whole annals of literature. The bi'ilHant picture, too, whicli he has left of the discovery of America, and the manners of the savage tribes which tlien inliabited that continent, proves MICHELEt's FRANCE. 421 that he was not less capable of wielding the fascination of description and romance. But in narrating political events, and diving into the mysteries of human motives, his ^Yant of practical acquaintance with man is at once apparent. He described the human heart from hearsay, not experience : he was a historian by reading, not observation. We look in vain in his pages for a gallery of historical portraits, to be placed beside the noble one which is to be found in Cla- rendon. As little can we find in them any profound remarks, like those of Bacon, Hume, or Tacitus, the justice of which is perpetually brought home by experience to every succes- sive generation of men. His reputation, accordingly, is sen- sibly declining ; and though it will never become extinct, it is easy to foresee that it is not destined to maintain, in future times, the colossal proportions which it at first acquired. Both Hume and Robertson, however, left untouched one fertile field of historic interest, wliich Herodotus and Gibbon had cultivated with such success. This is the geographical field, the description of countries as well as men and man- ners. It is surprising what variety and interest this gives to historical narrative, how strongly it fixes places and regions in the memory of the reader, and how much it aug- ments the interest of the story, by filling up and clothing in the mind's eye the scenes in which it occurred. Doubtless this must not be carried too far; unquestionably the narra- tive of human transactions is the main object of history, and the one thing needful, as in fiction, is to paint the human heart ; but still there, as elsewhere in the Fine Arts, variety and contrast contribute powerfully to the effect ; and amidst the incessant maze of villany and suffering which constitutes human transactions, it is sometimes refreshing to contem- plate for awhile the calm serenity and indestructible features of Nature. The modern French historians, forcibly struck with the insipidity and tameness of the philosophical histories, and fraught with the heart-rending recollections and fervent pas- sions of the Revolution, have sought to give life and anima- tion, as well as fidelity and accuracy to their works, by a sedulous recurrence to contemporary annals and authority, and an introduction of not only the facts and statements, but the ideas and words to be found in the ancient chronicles. 422 MICHELEt's FRANCE. Hence the habitual reciiiTeiice to original authority, not onlj by reference at the foot of the page, but bj quotation in the words of the old authors, of the actual expressions made use of on the more important occasions. There can be no doubt that this is in some respects an improvement, both with a view to the fidelity and accuracy of history ; for it at once affords a guarantee for the actual examination of original authority by the writer, provides a ready and imme- diate check on inaccuracy or misrepresentation, and renders his work a catalogue raisonne, where those who desire to study the subject thoroughly, may discover at once where their materials are to be found. The works of both the Thierrys,'"' of Barante, Sisrnondi, and ]\Iiclielet, are through- out constructed on this principle ; and thence, in a great measure, the fidelity, spirit, and value of their productions. But fully admitting, as we do, the importance of this great improvement in the art of historical composition, it has its limits ; and writers who adopt it will do well to reflect on what those limits are. Thouirh founded on fact, though based on reality, though dependent for its existence on trutli. History is still one of the Fine A rts. We must ever recol- lect that Mr Fox assigned it a place next to Poetry, and before Oratory. All these improvements in the collection and preparation of materials add to the solidity and value of the structure, but they make no alteration in the prin- ciples of its composition. However the stones may be cut out of the quarry, however fashioned or carved by the skill of the workman, their united effect will be entirely lost if they are not put together by the conception of a Michael Angelo, a Palladio, or a Wren. Genius is still the soul of history; its highest inspirations must be derived from the Muses. The most valuable historical works, if not sustained by this divine quality, will speedily sink into useful quarries or serviceable books of reference. In vain does a Utilitarian age seek to discard the influence of imagination, and subject thought to the deductions of fact and reason, and the motives of temporal comfort. The value of fancy and ardour of mind, is more strongly felt in the narration of real, In the Histoire de la Conquite de VAngleterre 2yar les Normands, par Auguste Thierry ; and the Histoire des Gaulois, and Histoire dcs Rois 3IerovingienS; par AMEDf E Thierry, (brother of Auguste.) michelet's fkance. 423 than even in the conception of fictitious events ; for this rea- son, that it is more easy to discard uninteresting facts from a romance than render them interesting in history. They may be rejected altogether in the former; in the latter, they must be retained. It is easier to throw aside a burden than to contrive how to bear it. Induction may enable the autlior to sustain the weight, but it will never make his reader do so. Imagination alone can lighten the burden. It is tlie wings of Genius which must support Truth itself through the sea of Time. " Ces ouATages ne sont pas que de Tima- gination.'' " De I'lmagination !" replied Napoleon; "He bien ! c'est I'lmaginatiou qui domine le monde." This eternal and indestructible superiority of genius to all the efforts of industry and intelligence, when unenlight- ened by its divine light, is not only noways inconsistent with the most minute acquaintance with facts, and sedulous attention to historic accuracy, but it can attain its highest flights only by being founded on tliat basis. jMere imagina- tion and fancy will never supply the want of a faithful deli- neation of nature. The most inexperienced observer has no difficulty in distinguishing the one from the other. No great and universal reputation was ever gained, either in fic- tion, history, or the arts of imitation, but by a close and correct representation of reality. Romance rises to its highest flights, when it transports into the pages of the novelist the incidents, thoughts, and characters of real life. History assumes its most attractive garb when it clothes reality with the true but brilliant colours of romance. Look at the other arts. How did Homer and Shakspeare com- pose their immortal works 1 Not by conceiving ideal events and characters, the creation only of their own prolific ima- ginations, but by closely observing and describing nature, and by giving to their characters (albeit cast in the mould of fancy) those traits of reality which, being founded on the general and universal feelings of the human breast, have spoken with undiminished force to every succeeding age. How did Raphael and Claude elevate Painting to its highest and most divine conceptions, as well as its most exquisite and chastened finishing '? By assiduously copying nature, — by drawing every limb, every feature, every branch, every sunset from real scenes, and peopUng the world of their 424 MICHE let's FRANCE. brilliant imaginations, not ^vith new creations, but with those objects and those images with which in reality all men were familiar. True, they moulded them into new combinations ; true, they gave them an expression, or threw over them a light, more perfect than any human eye had yet witnessed; but that is precisely the task of genius, and it is in per- forming it that its highest excellence is attained. It is by moulding reality into the expression of imagination that the greatest triumphs of art are attained; and he who separates the one from the other will never rise to durable greatness in either. We are the more inclined to insist on this eternal truth, as we perceive in the present style of historical composition, both in this country and on the Continent, unequivocal indications of a tendency to lose sight of the great end and aim of history, in the anxiety of attaining accuracy in its materials. Again and again we assert, that such accuracy is the indispensable basis of history ; it must form its ele- ments and characterise all its parts. But it will not of itself form a historian ; it is to history what the sketches from nature in the Liber Veritatis are to the inimitable Claudes of the Doria Palace at Rome, or the National Gallery in London. Writers in this age have been so forcibly struck with the necessity of accuracy in their facts, and original drawing in their pictures, that they have gone into the opposite extreme ; and the danger now is, not so much that they will substitute imagination for reality, or neglect ori- ginal drawing in their pictures, as that, in their anxiety to preserve the fidelity of the sketches from which their pictures are taken, they will neglect the principles of their composi- tion, and the great ends, moral, political, and religious, of their art. This tendency is more particularly conspicuous in the Continental authors ; but it is also very visible in several justly esteemed historical writers of our own country. If you take up any of the volumes of Thierry, Barante, Michaud, Sismondi, or Michelet, you will find the greater part of their pages filled with quotations from the old chronicles and contemporary annalists. In their anxiety to preserve accuracy of statement and fidelity in narrative, they have deemed it indispensable to give, on almost all occasions, MICHELET S PRANCE. 425 the Tery words of their original authorities. This is a rery great mistake, and indeed so great a one that, if persevered in, it will speedily terminate that school of historical com- position. It is impossible to make a harmonious whole by a selection of passages out of a vast mass of original writers of various styles and degrees of merit, and running, perhaps, over a course of centuries. It would be just as likely that you could make a perfect picture by dovetailing together bits of mosaic, dug up from the ruins of ancient Rome ; or an impressive temple, by piling, on the top of each other, the columns, entablatures, and architraves of successive structures, raised during a course of many centuries. Every composition in the fine arts, to produce a powerful impres- sion, and attain a lasting success, must have that unitij of expression which, equally as in poetry and tlie drama, is indispensable to the production of emotion or delight in the mind of the person to whom it is addressed ; and unity of expression is to be attained equally in ten thousand pages, and by recording ten thousand facts, as in an epic of Milton, a picture of Claude's, or a drama of Sophocles. Sharon Turner, Lingard, Tytler, and Hallam are most able writers, indefatigable in the collection of facts, acute in the analysis of authorities, luminous in the deductions they have drawn from them. Immense is the addition which their labours have made to the real and correct annals of the British empire. But though many of their episodes are most captivating, and parts of their works must entrance every reader, there is no concealing the fact, that their pages are often deficient in interest, and are far from possessing the attraction wliicli might have been expected from sub- jects of such varied and heart-stirring incident, treated by writers of such power of composition and learned acquire- ments. The reason is, that they have not regarded history as one of the fine arts ; they have not studied unity of effect, or harmony of composition ; they have forgot the place assigned it by Fox — next to poetry in the arts of composi- tion. In the search of accuracy they have sometimes injured effect ; in the desire to give original words, they have often lost originality of thought. Their pages are invaluable to the annalist ; and, as books of reference or of value to scholars, they will always maintain a high place in ourlitera- 426 michelet's fkance. tiire ; but tliej will not render hopeless, like Livj, Tacitus, or Gibbon, future histories on the subjects thej have treated. From the facts thej have brought to light, a future historian Tvill be able to gire a correct detail of British story, which, if clothed in the garb of imagination, may attain durable celebrity, and may possibly come in the end to rival the simpler, but less truthful narrative of Hume, in popularity and interest. Colonel Napier's descriptions of battles, and the heart- stirring events of military warfare, are superior to anything in the same style, not only in modern, but almost in ancient history. His accounts of the battles of Albuera and Sala- manca, of the sieges of Badajos and San Sebastian, of the actions in the Pyrenees, and of the struggle of Toulouse, pos- sess a heart- stirring interest, a force and energy of drawing, which could have been attained only by the eye of genius animated by the reminiscences of reality. But the great defect of his brilliant work is the want of calmness in the judgment of political events, and undue crowding in the details of his work. He is far too minute in the account of inconsiderable transactions. He throws the light too equally upon all the figures in his canvass ; the same fault which characterises the home scenes of Wilkie, and will render them with equal, perhaps superior genius, inferior in lasting effect to the paintings of Teniers or Gerard Dow. So prodigious is the accumulation of detached facts which he describes, that the most enthusiastic admirer of military narrative is speedily satiated, and ordinary readers find their minds so confused by the events passed under review, that, with the exception of a few briUiaut actions and sieges, they often close the work without any distinct idea of the events which it has so admirably recorded. This defect is equally conspicuous in the pages of M. Michelet. That he is a man not merely of extensive and varied reading, but of fine genius and original thought, is at once apparent. He states in his preface, and the perusal of his work amply justifies the assertion, '^ that the most rigid criticism must concede to him the merit of having drawn his narrative entirely from original sources." But it were to be wished that, amidst this anxious care for the collection of mate- rials, and the impressing of a faithful and original character MICHELET S FRAJs^CE. 427 upon his Tvork, he had been eqiiallj attentive to the great art of history — viz., the massiog objects properly together, keeping them in the due subordination and perspective which their relative importance demands, and conveying a distinct impression to the reader's mind of the great eras and changes which the varied story of his subject presents. Want of attention to this has wellnigh rendered all the rest of no avail. To the learned reader, who is previously familiar with the principal events he describes, his narrative may convey something like a definite idea of the thread of events : but how many are these compared to the great mass of readers 1 Perhaps one in a hundred in France — - one in five hundred in all other countries. The great bulk of readers may shut his last volume after the most careful perusal, without retaining any distinct recollection of the course of French History, or any remembrance at all of anj-- thing but a few highly wrought up and interesting passages. This is the great defect of the work, arising from want of attention to the due proportion of objects, and not throwing subordinate ones sufficiently into the shade. The same grievous mistake is conspicuous in ]\Iackintosh, Lingard, and Turner's histories of England. It is the great danger of the new or graphic school of history ; and unless care be taken to guard against it, the whole productions of that school will be consigned by future ages to oblivion. We cannot admit that the magnitude or intricacy of a subject affords any excuse whatever for this defect. Livy did not fall into it in recording seven centuries of Roman victories ; Gibbon did not fall into it in spanning the dark gulf which separates ancient from modern times. Claude produced one uniform impression out of an infinity of details, — in some of his pieces solitary and rural, in others crowded with harbours, shipping, and figures. Gaspar Poussin finished, with scrupulous accuracy, every leaf in his forest scenes : but he managed the \vA\i and the shade with such exquisite skill, that the charm of general effect is pro- duced on the spectator's mind. Virgil produces one uniform impression from the homely details of his Georgics, equally as the complicated events of the JSneid. Amidst an infinity of details and episodes, Tasso has, with consummate skill, preserved unity of emotion in his Jerusalem Delivered. 428 michelet's feaxce. Milton lias not lost it even in recording the events of heaven and earth. Look at Nature ; everj leaf, every pebble, every cliff, every blade of grass, in the most extensive scene is finished with that perfection that characterises all her works ; yet what majesty and generality of effect in the mighty whole ! That is the model of historical composi- tion : every object should be worked out, nothing omitted, nothing carelessly touched ; but a bright light should be thrown only on the brilliant events, the momentous changes ; whole generations and centuries of monotonous events cast into the shade, that is, slightly and rapidly passed over ; and the most sedulous care taken to classify events into periods, in such a way as to form so many cells, as it were, in the memory of the reader, wherein to deposit the store of information afforded in regard to each. There is, in truth, only one really great style in history, as there is in poetry, painting, or music. Superficial observers speak of a new school of history, or a new mode of treating human affairs, as they would of a new plant or a new opera : they might as well speak of a new style in sculpture or painting, in mathematics or astronomy, in epic or dramatic poetry. We should like to see any one who would improve on the style of Phidias and Raphael, of Homer and Virgil, of Tasso and Milton, of Sophocles or Racine. In inferior styles, indeed, there is a very great variety in this, as there is in all the other Fine Arts ; but in the highest walks there is but one. The principles of the whole are the same ; and those principles are to produce generality of effect out of specialty of objects ; to unite fidelity of drawing with brilliancy of imagination. Observe with what exquisite skill Tasso works this uniform impression out of the varied events of his Jerusahm Delivered; therein lies his vast superiority to the endless adventures of the more brilliant and imaginative Ariosto. The principles which regulated the composition of the Prometheus Vinctus of /Eschylus and the Hamlet of Shakspeare are the same : the Odes of Pindar are the counterparts of those of Gray ; the sculpture of Phidias and the painting of Raphael arc nothing but the same mind working with different materials. The composition of Gibbon is directed by exactly the same principles as the sunsets of Claude ; the battle-pieces of MICHELET S FRANCE. 429 Napier aucl the banditti of Salvator are fac-similes of each other ; the episodes of Livj and the Good Shepherds of Murillo produce the same emotions in the breast. Super- ficial readers will deride these observations, and ask, what has painting external objects to do with the narration of human events 1 We would recommend them to spend twenty years in the study of either, and they will be at no loss to discover in what their analogy consists. On this account, we cannot admit that history is neces- sarily drier or less interesting than poetry or romance. True, it must give a faithful record of events ; true, unless it does so, it loses its peculiar and highest usefulness ; but are we to be told that reality is less attractive than fiction ? Are feigned distresses less poignant than real ones — imaginary virtues less ennobling than actual 'i The advantage of fiction consists in the narrower compass which it embraces, and, consequently, the superior interest which it can com- municate by working up the characters, events, and scenes. That, doubtless, is a great advantage ; but is it beyond the reach of history 1 May not the leading characters and events there be delineated with the same force, brilliancy, and fidelity to nature 1 Has it not the additional source of interest arisinir from the events bein^ real '? — an interest which all w4io tell stories to children will see exemplified in their constant question, " Is it true f " None can see more strongly than we do, that the highest aim and first duty of history is not to amuse, but to instruct the world : and that mere amusement or interest are of very secondary iuipor- tance. But is amusement irreconcilable with instruction — interest with elevation ? Is not truth best conveyed when it is clothed in an attractive garb '? Is not the greatest danger which it runs that of being superseded by attractive fiction '? How many readers are familiar with English history through Shakspeare and Scott, rather than Hume and Lingard ! That illustrates the risk of leaving truth to its unadorned resources. Was it not in parables that Supreme Wisdom communicated itself to mankind ^ The wise man will never disdain the aid even of imagination and fancy in communicating instruction. Recollect the words of Napoleon — " C'est Timagination qui domine le monde." We have been insensibly led into these remarks by 430 michelet's fraxce. observiDg in what manner Sismondi, Tliierrj, Barante, Michelet, and indeed all the writers of the antiquarian and graphic school, have treated the history of France. Thej are all men of powerful talent, brilliant imagination, unbounded research, and philosophic minds : their histories are so superior to any which preceded them, that, in reading them, we appear to be entering upon a new and hitherto unknown world. But it is in the very richness of their materials — the extent of their learning — the vast stores of original ideas and authority they have brought to bear on the annals of the monarchy of Clovis — that we discern the principal defect of their compositions. They have been welluigh overwhelmed by the treasures which they themselves have dug up. So vast is the mass of original documents wliich they have consulted — of details and facts which they have brought to light — that they have too often lost sight of the first rule in the art of historj^ — unity of composition. They have forgotten the necessity of a distinct separation of events in such a manner as to impress the general course of time upon the mind of their readers. They are accurate, graphic, minute in details; but the tout ensemhle is too often forgotten, and the Temple of History made up rather of a chaos of old marbles dug up from the earth, and piled on each other without either order or symmetry, than of the majestic proportions and colossal masses of the Pantheon or St Peter's. The annals of no country are more distinctly separated into periods than those of France : in none has the course of events more clearly pointed out certain resting-places, at which the historian may pause to show tlie progress of civilisation and the growth of the nation. The first origin of the Gauls, and their social organisation, before the conquest of the Romans — their institutions under those miglity conquerors, and the vast impress which their wisdom and experience, not less than their oppression and despotism, communicated to their character and habits — the causes whicli led to the decay of the empire of the Caesars, and let in the barbarians as deliverers rather than enemies into its vast provinces — the establishment of the monarchy of Clovis by these rude conquerors, and its gradual extension from the Rliine to the Pyrenees — the MICHELET's FRANCE. 431 decay of the Merovingian dynasty, and the prostration of government under the Rois Faineants — the rise of the Maires du Palais, and their final establishment on the tlirone by the genius of Charlemagne — the rapid fall of his successors, and the origin of the Bourbon dynasty, contem- porary with the Plantagenets of England — the crusades, with their vast effects, moral, social, and political, on the people and institutions of the country, and the balance of power among the different classes of society — the expulsion of the Enghsh by the abiUty of Philip Augustus, and the restoration of one monarchy over the whole of France — the friglitful atrocities of the religious war against the Albigeois ■ — the dreadful wars with England, which lasted one hundred and twenty years, from Edward III. to Henry V., with their immediate effect, analoo^ous to that of the Wars of the Roses on this side of the Channel, in destroying the feudal powers of the nobility — the consequent augmenta- tion of the power of the crown by the standing army of Charles VII. — the indefatigable activity and state policy of Louis XL — the brilliant but ephemeral conquest of Italy by the rise and progress of Charles IX. — the rivalry of Francis I. and Charles V. — the religious wars, with their desolating present effects, and lasting ultimate conse- quences — the deep and Machiavelian pohcy of Cardinal Richelieu, and its entire success in concentrating the whole influence and power of Government in Paris — the brilliant era of Louis XIV., with its Augustan halo, early conquests, and ultimate disasters — the corruptions of the Regent Orleans and Louis XV. — the virtues, difficulties, and martyrdom of Louis XVI. — the commencement of the era of Revolutions, ending in the fanaticism of Robespierre and the carnage of the Empire — form a series of events and periods, stretching through the long course of eigliteen cen- turies, and bringing down the annals of mankind from the Druids of Gaul and woods of Germany, to the intellect of Laplace and the glories of Napoleon. To exhibit such a picture to the mind's eye in its just colours, due proportions, and real light — to trace so long a history fraught with such changes, glories, and disasters — to unfold, through so vast a progress, the unceasing develop- ment of the human mind, and simultaneously with it the 432 michelet's feaxce. constant punisliment of human iniquity, — is indeed a task ^vortlij of the greatest intellect which the Ahnightj has ever vouchsafed to guide and enlighten mankind. It will never be adequately performed but by one mind : there is a unity which must pervade every great work of history, as of all the other Fine Arts; a succession of different hands breaks the tliread of thought and mars the uniformity of effect as much in recording the annals of centuries, as in painting the passions of the heart, or the beauties of a single scene in nature. That it is not hopeless to look for such a mind is evident to all who recollect how Gibbon has painted the still wider expanse, and traced the longer story, of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire : but how often in a century does a Gibbon appear in the world ! In the outset of this noble task, JMichelet has displayed \evy great abihty; and the defects, as it appears to us, of his work, as it proceeds, strikingly illustrate the dangers to which the modern and graphic style of history is exposed. He is admirable, equallj^ with Sismondi, Thierry, and Guizot, in the description of the condition of Gaul under the Romans, and the causes which paralysed the strength, and at length overthrew the power, of the empire of the Csesars. With a discriminating eye and a master's hand, he has drawn the different character of tlie Celtic and German races of mankind, and the indelible impress which they have severally communicated to their descendants. The early settlement of the German tribes in Gaul, and the amalgamation of the victorious savage with the vanquished civilised race, is drawn in the spirit of a philosopher, and with a graphic power. If he had continued the work as it was thus begun, it would have left nothing to be desired. But when he comes down to later times, and, above all, wlien he becomes involved in the endless maze and minute details of tlie Chronicles and early French ^Memoirs, the work assumes a different cliaracter. Though you still, in occasional expressions, see the reflections of the philosopher — in frequent pictures, the eye of the painter — yet the narra- tive in general is flooded by an ocean of details. Fatigued with the endless maze of intrigues, wars, tumults, tortures, crusades, and crimes, which succeed one another in rapid michelet's fraxce. 433 succession, the reader in despair shuts the volume, with hardly any recollection of the thread of events. He recollects only that almost all the kings appear to have been wicked, almost all the nobles ambitious, almost all the priests cruel, almost all the people ferocious. There is nothing which tends so strongly to make us satisfied with our own lot, and inclined to return thanks to Heaven for having cast it in our age, as the study of the crimes, disasters, and sufferings of those which have preceded it. But still " the mighty maze is not without a plan.^" In the midst of these hideous crimes and atrocities, of this general anguish and suffering, fixed laws were operating, a silent progress was going forward, and Providence was patiently and in silence working out its ultimate designs by the free agency of an infinity of separate individuals. A great system of moral retribution was unceasingly at work; and out of the mingled virtues and vices, joys and sorrows, crimes and punishment, of previous centuries, were slowly forming the elements of the great and glorious French monarchy. It is in the development of this magnificent progress, and in the power of exhibiting it in lucid colours to the eye of the spectator, that Michelet is chiefly deficient in his later volumes. This seems at first sight inexplicable, as in the early ones, relating to Gaul under the Romans, the settlement of the Franks, and the early kings of the Merovingian race, his powers of generalisation and philoso- phic observation are eminently conspicuous. They form, accordingly, by much the most interesting and instructive part of his history. But a closer examination will at once unfold the cause of this difference, and point to the chief changes of the graphic and antiquarian school of history. He generalised in the earlier volumes, because his materials were scanty ; he has not done so in the later ones, because they were redundant. In the first instance, he saw objects at a distance in their just proportions; and, not being distracted with details, he threw broad lights and shadows over their great features ; in the last, the objects were so near the eye, and the lights so perplexed and frequent, that he has in some degree lost sight of all general effect in his composition, or at least failed in conveying any lucid impression to the reader's mind. VOL. III. 2 E 434 michelet's France. In common ^vith all later writers who have observed much or thought deeply on human affairs, J\I. INIichelet is a firm believer in the inherent and indelible influence of race, both on the character and destiny of nations. His observa- tions on this subject, especially on the pecuharities of the Celtic race, and their vital difference from the German, form one of the most interesting and valuable parts of his work. He traces the same character through the Scotch Highlanders, the mountaineers of Cumberland and Wales, the native Irish, the inhabitants of Brittany, and the mountaineers of Gascony and Beam. On the other hand, the same national characteristics may be observed in the German race, under whatever climate and circumstances; in Saxony as in England; in the Swiss mountains as in the Dutch marshes; in the crowded marts of Flanders as in the solitude of the American forest. Of the inherent character of the Celtic race, he gives the following animated description : — " The mixed races of Celts who are called French, can be rightly under- stood only by a study of the pure Celts, the Bretons and Welsh, the Scotch Highlanders and Irish peasants. While France, undergoing the yoke of repeated invasion, is marching through successive ages from slavery to freedom, from disgrace to glory, the old Celtic races, perched on their native mountains, or sequestered in their far distant isles, have remained faithful to the poetic independence of their barbarous life, till surprised by the rude hand of foreign conquest. It was in this state that England surprised, overwhelmed them ; — vainly, hoAvever, has the Anglo-Saxon pressed upon them — they repel his eiforts as the rocks of Brittany or Cornwall the surges of the Atlantic. The sad and patient Judea, which numbered its ages by its servitude, has not been more sternly driven from Asia. But such is the tenacity of the Celtic race, such the principle of life in nations, that they have endured every outrage, and still preserve inviolate the manners and customs of their forefathers. Race of granite ! Immovable, like the huge Druidical blocks Avhich they still regard with superstitious veneration. " One might have expected that a race which remained for ever the same, while all w^as changing around it, would succeed in the end in conquering by the mere inert force of resistance, and would impress its character on the world. The very reverse has happened, — the more the race has been isolated, the more it has fallen into insignificance. To remain original, to resist all foreign intermixture, to repel all the ideas or improve- ments of the stranger, is to remain Aveak and isolated iu the Avorld. There is the secret of the Celtic race — there is the key to their whole history. It has never had but one idea — it has communicated that to no other nations, but it -has received none from them. From age to age it has remained strong but limited, indestructible but humiliated, the enemy of the human race, and its eternal stain. Woful obstinacy of individuality, which proudly rests on itself alone, and repels all community with the rest of the Avorld. " The genius of the Celts, and above all of the Gauls, is vigorous and MICHELET's FRANCE. 435 fruitful, strongly inclined to material enjoyments, to pleasure and sensuality. The pleasures of sex have ever exercised a powerful influence over them. They are still the most prolific of the human race. In France, the Vert Galant is the true national king. We know how marvellously the native Irish have multiplied and overflowed all the adjoining states. It was a common occurrence in Brittany, during the middle ages, for a seigneur to have a dozen wives. They constantly praised themselves^ and sent forth their sons fearless to battle. Universally, among the Celtic nations, bastards succeeded even among kings, as chief of the clan. Woman, the object of desire, the mere sport of voluptuousness, never attained the digni- fied rank assigned to her among nations of the German descent. " Ko people recorded in history have resisted so stubbornly as the Celts. The Saxons were conquered by the Normans in a single battle ; but Cam- bria contended two hundred years with the stranger. Their hopes sustain them after their independence is lost : an unconquerable will is the charac- ter of their race. While awaiting the day of its resurrection, it alternately sings and weeps : its chants are mingled with tears, as those of the Jews, when by the waters of Babylon they sat down and wept. The few frag- ments of Ossian which can really be relied on as ancient, have a melancholy character. Even our Bretons, though they have less reason to lament than the rest of their race, are sad and mournful in their ideas ; their sympathy is with the Xight, with Sorrow, with Death. 'I never sleep,' says a Breton proverb, ' but I die a bitter death.' To him who walks over a tomb they say, ' Withdraw from my domain.' They have little reason to be gay ; all has conspired against them : Brittany and Scotland have attached them- selves to the weaker side, to causes which were lost. The power of choosing its monarchs has been taken from the Celtic race since the mysterious stone, formerly brought from Ireland into Scotland, has been transported to Westminster. " Ireland ! Poor first-born of the Celtic race! So far from France, yet its sister, whom it cannot succour across the waves ! The Isle of Saints — the Emerald Isle — so fruitful in men, so bright in genius ! — the country of Berkeley and Toland, of Moore and O'Connell ! — the land of bright thought and the rapid sword, which preserves, amidst the old age of this world, its poetic inspiration. Let the English smile when, in passing some hov^el in their towns, they hear the Irish widow chant the coronach for her husband. Weep ! mournful country ; and let France too weep, for degradaton which she cannot prevent — calamities which she cannot avert ! In vain have four hundred thousand Irishmen perished in the service of France. The Scotch Highlanders will ere long disappear from the face of the earth ; the moun- tains are daily depopulating; the great estates have ruined the land of the Gaul as they did ancient Italy. The Highlander will ere long exist only in the romances of AValter Scott. The tartan and the claymore excite surprise in the streets of Edinburgh : they disappear— they emigrate ; their national airs will ere long be lost, as the music of the Eolian harp when the winds are hushed. " Behind the Celtic world, the old red granite of the European formation, has arisen a new world, with different passions, desires, and destinies. Last of the savage races which overflowed Europe, the Germans were the first to introduce the spirit of independence ; the thirst for iyidividital free- dom. That bold and youthful spirit— that youth of man, who feels himself strong and free in the world which he appropriates to himself in anticipation — in forests of which he knows not the bounds — on a sea which wafts him to unknown shores — that spring of the unbroken horse which bears him to the Steppes and the Pampas — all worked in Alaric, when he swore that an unknown force impelled him to the gates of Rome ; they impelled the Danish pirate when he rode on the stormy billow ; they animated the Saxon outlaws, when under Robin Hood they contended for the laws of 436 MICHELET's FRANCE. Edward the Confessor against the Xorman barons. That spirit of personal freedom, of unbounded individual pride, shines in all their writings — it is the invariable characteristic of the German theology and philosophy. From the day when, according to the beautiful German fable, the ' Warc/us ' scattered the dust on all his relations, and threw the grass over his shoulder, and, resting on his statf, overleapt the frail paternal enclosure, and let his plume float to the wind — from that moment he aspired to the empire of the world. He deliberated with Attila whether he should overthrow the empire of the East or AVest ; he aspired with England to overspread the western and southern hemispheres. '^ It is from this mingled spirit of poetry and adventure, that the whole idealism of the Germans has taken its rise. In their robust race is com- bined the heroic spirit and the wandering instinct — they unite alone the ' Iliad' and ' Odyssey' of modern times — gold and women were the objects of their early expeditions ; but these objects had nothing sensual or de- grading in them. Woman was the companion, the support of man ; his counsel in difficulty, his guardian angel in war. Her graces, her charms, consisted in her courage, her constancy. Educated by a man — by a warrior — the virgin was early accustomed to the use of arms — ' Gothorum gens per- fida, sed pudica; Saxones crudelitate efl'eri, sedcastitate mirandi.' Woman in primitive Germany M-as bent to the earth beneath the weight of agricul- tural labour ; but she became great in the dangers of war— the companion and partner of man, she shared his fate, and lightened his sorrows. ' Sic vivendum, sic pereundum,' says Tacitus. She withdrew not from the field of battle — she faced its horrors — she turned not aside from its blood. She was the Goddess of War — the charming and terrible spirit which at once animated its spirit, and rewarded its dangers — which inspired the fury of the charge, and soothed the last moments of the dying warrior. She was to be seen on the field of blood, as Edith the swan-necked sought the body of Harold after the defeat of Hastings, or the young Englishwoman, who, to find her lost husband, turned over the dead on the field of Waterloo." — Vol. i. p. 150, 175. " si sic omnia !" The mincl is rendered dizzy ; it turns round as on the edge of a precipice bj the reflections arising out of this animated picture. In truth may it be said that these observations demolish at one blow the whole reyolu- tionary theories of later times — they have turned the streams of French philosophy by their source. It was the cardinal point, the leading principle of the whole poHtical specula- tion of the last half of the eighteenth century, that institu- tions were everything, character nothing ; that man was moulded entirely by the government or religion to which he was subjected; and that there was no essential difference in the disposition of the different races which had overspread the earth. The first half of the nineteenth century was spent in the practical application of this principle. The French Jacobins conceived themselves adequate to forge constitutions for the whole world, and sent forth their armies of starving republicans to force them at the point of the bayonet on all mankind. Less vehement in their constitu- michelet's feance. 437 tional propagandism, the English have been more persevering, and incomparably more pernicious. Their example allured, as much as the horrors of the Revolution repelled, mankind. The ardent, the generous, the philanthropic, everywhere sighed for the establishment of a government which should give them at once th5 energy of the British character, the glories of the British empire. And what has been the result ? The desolation of Spain, the ruin of Portugal, the depopulation and blasting of South America. Vain have been all attempts to transplant to nations of Celtic or Moorish descent the institutions which grew and flourished anion or those of Anglo-Saxon blood. The ruin of the West India Islands proves their inapplicability to those of Negro extraction ; — the everlasting distraction of Ireland, to those of unmixed Celtic blood. A century of bloodshed, devasta- tion, and wretchedness will be spent ere mankind generally learn that there is an essential and indelible distinction of character between the different races of men ; and, in Montesquieu's words, that " no nation ever attained to durable greatness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit." Nor is there any foundation for the common observation, that this presents a melancholy view of human affairs ; and that it is repugnant to our ideas of the beneficence of an overruling Providence to suppose that all nations are not adapted for the same elevating institutions. Are all nations blessed with the same climate, or soil, or productions 1 Will the vine and the olive flourish on every slope — the maize or the wheat on every plain '? No. Every country has its own productions, riches, and advantages ; and the true wisdom of each is found to consist in cultivating the fruits, or developing the riches, which Nature has bestowed. It is the same in the moral world. All nations were not framed in the same mould, because all were not destined for the same ends. To some was given, for the mysterious but beneficent designs of Providence, excellence in arms, and the ensanguined glory of ruthless conquest; to others supremacy in commerce, and the mission of planting their colonies in distant lands ; to a few excellence in literature and the arts, and the more durable dominion over the thoughts and minds of men. What sort of a world would it be if all 438 michelet's France. nations ^ere sanguinary and barbarous like the Tartars — - or meek and patient like the Hindoos '? If thej all had the thirst for conquest of the Grand Army — or the rage for transplanting their institutions like the Enghsh '? We boast, and in some respects with reason, of our greatness, our power, our civilisation. Is there any man amongst us who would wish to see that civilisation universal, with its accom- paniments of nearly a seventh'' of the whole population of the empire paupers ; — of Chartists, Socialists, Repealers, Anti-Corn-Law Leaguers, and landed selfishness '? As a specimen of Michelet's powers of description, we extract his account of the battle of Azincour : — " The two armies presented a strange contrast. On the side of the French were three enormous squadrons, three forests of lances, who formed in the narrow plain, and drew up as they successively emerged from the defiles in their rear. In front were the Constables, the Princes, the Dukes of Orleans, Bar, and Alen^on, the Counts of Nevers, D'Eu, Richemont, and Yendome, amidst a crowd of barons, dazzling in gold and steel, with their banners floating in the air, their horses covered with scales of armour. The French had archers also, but composed of the commons only ; the haughty seigneurs would not give them a place in their proud array. Every place was fixed ; no one would surrender his own ; the plebeians would have been a stain on that noble assembly. They had cannons also, but made no use of them : probably no one would surrender his place to them. " The English army was less brilliant in appearance. The archers, 10,000 in number, had no armour, often no shoes ; they were rudely equipped with boiled skins, tied with osier wands, and strengthened by a bar of iron on their feet. Their hatchets and axes suspended from their girdles gave them the appearance of carpenters. They all drew the bow with the left arm — those of France with the right. Many of these sturdy workmen had stript to the shirt, to be the more at ease — first, in drawing the bow, and at last in wielding the hatchet, when they issued from their hedge of stakes to hew away at those immovable masses of horses." " It is an extraordinary but well authenticated fact, that the French army was so closely wedged together, and in great part so stuck in the mud, that they could neither charge nor retreat ; but just stood still to be cut to pieces. At the decisive moment, when the old Thomas of Erpingham arranged the English army, he threw his staff in the air, exclaiming, ' Xow strike !' The shout of ten thousand voices was raised at once ; but to their great surprise, the French army stood still. Men and horses seemed alike enchained or dead iu their armour. In truth, these weighty war-horses, oppressed with the load of their armour and riders, were unable to move. The French were thirty-two deep — the English only four. \ That enormous depth rendered the great bulk of the French army wholly useless. The front ranks alone com- bated, and they were all killed. The remainder, unable either to advance or retreat, served only as a vast target to the unerring English aiTOws, which never ceased to rain down on the deep array. On the other hand, every Englishman wielded either his lance, his bow, or his hatchet, with effect. So * Viz.— 1,446,000 in England and Wales ; 76,000 in Scotland; and 2,000,000 in Ireland. In all, 3,522,000, out of 27,000,000.— Census of 1841. t This formation was the same on both sides, when Napoleon's Imperial Guard attacked the British Guards at Waterloo. michelet's feance. 439 thick was the storm of arrows which issued from the English stali;es, that the French horsemen bent their heads to their saddle-bows, to avoid being pierced through their visors. Twelve hundred horse, impatient of the dis- charge, broke from the flanks, and charged. Hardly a tenth part reached the stakes, where they were pierced through, and soon fell beneath the Eng- lish axes. Then those terrible archers issued from their palisade, and hewed to pieces the confused mass of wounded horses, dismounted men, and furious steeds, which, galled by the incessant discharge of arrows, was now turmoil- ing in the bloody mud in which the chivalry of France was engulfed." — Vol. iv. p. 307, 311. We take leave of M. Miclielet, at least for the present, as his work is only half finished, with admiration for his genius, respect for his erudition, and gratitude for the service he has rendered to history ; but we cannot place him in the first rank of historians. He wants the art of massing objects and the spirit of general observation. His philosophy con- sists rather in drawing visions of the sequence of events, or speculations on an inevitable progress in human affairs, than an enlightened and manly recognition of a Supreme superin- tendence. He unites two singularly opposite sets of prin- ciples — a romantic admiration for the olden time, though with a full and just appreciation of its evils, with a devout belief in the advent of a perfect state of society, the true efflorescence of the nation, in the equality produced by the Revolution. Yet is his work a great addition to European literature, and the writers of England would do well to look to their laurels, if they wish, against the able phalanx now arising on the other side of the Channel, to maintain the ancient place of their country in historic literature. THE FALL OF KOME [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, Ju.ve 1846] The Rise and Fall of the Roman empire is bj far the most remarkable and memorable event which has occurred in the whole history of mankind. It is hard to say whether the former or the latter is most worthy of profound study and anxious examination. The former has hitherto most strongly attracted the attention of men, from the extraordinary spectacle it exhibited of human fortitude triumphing over every obstacle, and human perseverance at length attaining universal dominion. It was the spectacle most likely to rivet the attention of strenuous and growing nations — of men in that stage of existence when national ambition is strong and the patriotic passions ardent, and the selfish interests have not yet become so powerful as to have generally extinguished the generous affections. But it may be doubted whether the events that occurred in the later stages of the Roman empire, are not fraught with more valuable and important information than those of its earlier annals. Less interesting to the soldier, less animating to the citizen, less heart-stirring to the student, they are more instructive to the philosopher, more pregnant with warning to the states- man. Tliey contain the only instance yet exhibited among men of a nation sinking from no external shock, but from the mere influence of internal decay ; and point alone, of all passages in the annals of the species, to the provision made by nature, in the passions and selhshness of men, against the possibility of long-continued and universal dominion. To any one who attentively considers this all-important subject, two things must be apparent, of the very highest THE FALL OF ROME. 441 consequence in arriving at correct ideas on it. The first is, that the Roman empire did not sink under the external yiolence of the barbarians, but under the weakness and dechne which had arisen in its own bosom. The second, that the causes hitherto assigned by historians and philoso- phers for this internal decay, are either vague generalities, having no definite meaning, and incapable of any practical application, or can be easily shown, even to the most superficial reader, not to have been the real causes of the phenomenon. There can be no doubt that some of the irruptions of the barbarians — particularly those of the Goths into Romelia, which led to the fatal battles of Thessalonica and Adrianople ; and of Alaric into Italy, which terminated in the capture of the Eternal City — were very formidable inroads, and miglit, in the best days of the empire, have taxed its strength and required all its resolution to repel. But a little consideration must be sufficient to show that, formidable as these invasions were, they could without much difficulty have been withstood, if the empire had possessed the strength which it did in the days of the republic, or in the first two centuries of the Caesars. The Cimbri and Teutones, whom Marius combated and destroyed on the Rhone and in the north of Italy, were at least as formidable a body of barbarians as those which four centuries afterwards overturned the Western Empire. The forces whom Caesar conquered in Gaul, Trajan on the Danube, were to the full as powerful as those which carried the standards of the Goths and Vandals to Athens and Carthage. ^Etius, in the dechne of the empire, and with the mingled Roman and barbarian force of Gaul alone — a mere fraction of the united strength of the empire — defeated Attila in the plenitude of his power, at the head of three hundred thousand men, on the field of Chalons. Belisarius, with fifteen thousand men, recovered Africa from the Vandals ; and there remains a most curious letter of his to the emperor at Constantinople, describing the deplorable want of soldiers which he experienced when he landed in Italy. " We are arrived," says he, " in Italy, destitute of all the necessary implements of war — men, horses, arms, and money. We have collected, with extreme difficulty, in our late circuit through Thrace, about four thousand 442 THE FALL OF ROME. recruits, naked, and unskilled in the use of weapons/"- Thirty thousand legionary soldiers did the same by Italy under Narses, and overthrew the whole power of the Goths. So high did the Roman soldiers still stand even in the estimation of tlieir enemies, that Totila, the warlike monarch of that warlike people, strove to bribe them into his service by offers of high pay. None had yet been approved equal to these legionary soldiers in battle ; and the manner in which, with infinitely inferior forces, they repelled the barbarians on all sides, decisively demonstrates this superi- ority. The vigour and ability of Heraclius so restored the empire, when wellnigh sinking under tlie might of its enemies, that for a century it was regarded with awe by the barbarous nations all round its immense frontier. The five provinces beyond the Euphrates were conquered by the Romans from the Parthians during the decline of the empire. Nothing is so remarkable, in the last three centuries of Roman histoiy, as the small number of the forces which combated around the eagles, and the astonishing victories which, when led by ability, they gained over prodigious bodies of their enemies. The legions had dwindled into battalions, the battalions into cohorts. The four hundred and fifty thousand men who under Augustus guarded the fi-ontiers of the empire, had sunk to one hundred and fifty thousand in the time of Justinian, f But this liundred and fifty thousand upheld the Eastern Empire for a thousand years. So feeble were the assaults of the barbarians, that for above two centuries of that time the single city of Constantinople, with the aid of the Greek fire, defended itself with scarce any territory from which to draw support. " The nine bands of Honorius,'' says Gibbon, "did not exceed the number oi five thousand men ; yet this inconsiderable force was sufficient to terminate a war which had threatened the power and safety of Con- stantine. Such were the feeble arms which decided the possession of the Western provinces, from the wall of Antoninus to the columns of Hercules.^' ;|; It was not the strength of its enemies, therefore, but the weakness of itself, which, after an existence in the West and East of two * Procopius, book iii., chap. 12. Gibbon, voL iv. chap. 43, p. 126. Milman's Edition. t Gibbon's Rovie, vol. iv. chap. 42, p, 71. Milman's Edition, t Unci. chap. 30, p. 86, 47. THE FALL OF ROME. 443 thousand years, at length extinguished the Roman empire. Gibbon tells us this expressly : — " The theory of war," says he, " was not more familiar to the camps of Caesar and Trajan than to those of Justinian and Maurice. The science of tactics, the order, evolutions, stratagems of antiquity, were transcribed and studied in the books of the Greeks and Romans. Their magazines were plentifully stored with arms — in the construction and use of ships, engines, and fortifica- tions, the barbarians admired the ingenuity of a people whom they had often vanquished in the field. But the solitude or degeneracy of the provinces could no longer supply a race of men to handle the weapons, to guard those walls, to navigate those ships, and to reduce the theory of war to bold and successful practice. Neither honour, nor patriotism, nor generous superstition, could animate the lifeless bodies of slaves and strangers, who had succeeded to the honour of the legions/' '" What, then, were the causes of decay which proved fatal at lenoth to this immense and endurinoj dominion 1 Philosophers in all ages have pondered on the causes ; but those hitherto assigned do not seem adequate to explain the phenomenon. Not that the causes of weakness are baseless or imaginary ; on the contrary, many of them were most real and substantial sources of evil. But what renders them inadequate to explain the fall of Rome is, that they had all existed, and luere in full operation, at the time luhen the cominoniuealth and empire ivere at their highest point of elevation, and centuries before either exhibited any symptoms of lasting decay. For example, the ancient historians, from Sallust downwards, are loud in their denunciation of the corruption of public morals, and the selfish vices of the patrician classes of society, as being the chief source of the decay which was going forward ; while the growth of the repubhc had been mainly owing to the extraordinary virtue and energy of a small number of individuals.! But the very circumstance of these complaints having been made by * GiBBOX, vol. iv. chap. 46, p. 295. Milman's Edition. + " Mihi multum legenti multum audienti quae populus Romanus domi militiseque prseclara facinora fecissent, forte lubuit attendere quge res maxime tanta negotia sustinuit. At mihi multa agitanti constabat, paucorum civium egregiam virtutetn cuncta patravisse : eoque factum ut divitias paupertas, multitudinem paucitas, superaret." — Sallust, Bdl. Cat., 32. 444 THE FALL OF EOME. Sallust in the time of Augustus, and the fact of the empire of the West having existed for four hundred, that of the East for fourteen hundred years afterwards, affords decisive evidence tliat this cause cannot be considered as having been mainlj instrumental in producing their fall How is tlie unexampled grandeur and prosperity of tlie empire under Nero, Adrian, Trajan, and the two Antonines, wliose united reigns extended over eighty years, to be explained, if the seeds of ruin two centuries before had been sown in the vices and corruption of tlie rich patricians '? In truth, so far was general luxury or corruption from being the cause of the ruin of the empire, the cause of its fall was just the reverse. It was the excessive poverty of its central provinces, and their inability to pay the taxes, which was the undoubted cause of the catastrophe. The nobles and patricians often were luxurious, but they were not a thousandth part of the nation. The people was miserably poor, and got more indigent daily, in the later stages of its decay. Modern writers, to whom the philosophy of history for the first time in the annals of mankind has become known, and who were aware of the important influence of general causes on social prosperity, independent of the agency of individual men, have assigned a different set of causes more nearly approaching the truth. Montesquieu says, the decay of the Roman empire was the natural consequence of its extension. This sounds well, and looks like an aphorism : but if the matter be considered with attention, it will be found that it is vox et prceterea nihil. Those who, with so much complacency, rest in the belief that the fall of the Roman empire was the natural result of its extension, forget that its greatest prosperity ivas coexisterit with that very extension. It is impossible to hold that the decay of the empire was the consequence of its magnitude, when the glorious era of the Antonines, during which it numbered a hundred and twenty millions of inhabitants under its rule, and embraced nearly the whole known habitable globe witliin its dominion, immediately succeeded its greatest extension by the victories, unhappily to us so little known, of Trajan. More recent writers, seeing that Montesquieu's aphorism was a vague proposition which meant nothing, have gone a THE FALL OF ROME. 445 step further, and approached much nearer to the real explanation of the phenomenon. Guizot, Sismondi, and Michelet have concurred in assigning as the real cause of the decay of the Roman empire, the prevalence of slavery among its working population, and the great and increasing weight of taxes to support the imperial government. There can be no doubt that these were most powerful causes of weakness — perhaps, in truth, the immediate and ostensible causes of its ruin. Certainly they stand prominently forth from the facts recorded by contemporary annalists, as the immediate and visible causes of the decline of the empire. The history of these melancholy periods is full of eternal complaints, that men could not be got to fill the legions, nor taxes to replenish the treasury ; that the army had to be recruited from the semi-barbarous tribes on the frontier ; and that vast tracts of fertile land in the heart of the empire had relapsed into a state of nature, or were devoted only to pasturage, from the impossibility of finding cultivators who either would till the land, or could afford to pay the taxes with which it was charged. Doubtless the large proportion — at least a half, perhaps nearly two-thirds — of the people who were slaves, must have weakened the elements of strength in the empire ; and the enormous weight of the direct taxes, so grievously felt and loudly complained of,* must have paralysed, to a very great degree, both the industry of the people and the resources of government. But a very little consideration must be sufficient to show, that these were not the real sources of the decline of the empire ; or rather, that if they had not been aided in their operation by other causes, which truly undermined its strength, it might have been great and flourishing to this hour, and that they appeared as the main sources of decay when other causes had really dried up the sources of its strength. Slavery, it must be recollected, was universal in antiquity, and is so over two-thirds of the human race at this hour. Much as we may feel its evils and deprecate its severities, we ourselves, till within these three centuries, were entirely fed by serfs ; and a few years only have elapsed since the * They were as high as £9 sterling in the time of Constantine, a sum probably equal to £20 of our money. But the freemen were the higher classes alone, and it is probable a similar class, both in France and England, pay at least as much at this time. — See Gibbon, iii. 88. 446 THE FALL OF HOME. ^vhole of our colonial produce was raised bj slave labour. America and Russia — the two most rising states in existence — are, the former in part, the latter wholly, maintained by slaves. It was an armj in a great measure composed of men originally serfs which repelled Napoleon^s invasion, survived the horrors of the Moscow campaign, and carried the Russian standards to Paris, Erivan, and Adrianople. Alexander the Great conquered Asia with an army of freemen wholly fed by slaves. Athens, in the palmy days of her prosperity, had only 21,000 freemen, and 400,000 slaves. Rome itself, in its great and glorious periods, when it vanquished Hannibal, conquered Gaul, subdued the East — in the days of Scipio, Cnesar, and Trajan — was to the full as dependent on slave labour as it was in those of its decrepitude under Honorius or Justinian. Cato was a great dealer in slaves ; the Sabine farm was tilled by the arms of rural serfs ; Cincinnatus and Regulus worked their little freeholds entirely by means of that unhappy class. Rome was brouglit to the verge of destruction, nearer ruin than it had been by the arms of the Carthaginians, by the insurrection of the slaves shortly after the third Punic con- test, so well known under the appellation of the Servile war. It is perfectly ridiculous, therefore, to assign as a cause of the destruction of Rome, a circumstance in the social condition of its people which coexisted with their greatest prosperity, which has prevailed in all the most renowned nations of the earth in a certain stage of their progress, and is to be found, in our own times, in states the most powerful, and the most likely to attain vast and long-continued dominion. Equally futile is it to point to the weight of the taxes as the main cause of the Ions; decline and final overthrow of Rome. Taxes no doubt are an evil ; and if they become excessive, and are levied in a direct form, they may come in the end to ruin industry, and weaken all the public resources to such an extent as to render a nation incapable of defending itself. But a very little consideration must be sufficient to show that it was not, in the case of Rome, the increase of the taxes taken as a whole, hut the decline in the resources of those who paid them, whicli rendered them so oppressive. If, indeed, the national establishments of the Roman empire had gone on increasing as it advanced THE FALL OF ROME. 447 in years, and grew in extent and the necessity of increasing them, until at length their charges became excessive and crushing to industry, the theory would have been borne out by the fact, and afforded perhaps satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon. But the fact was just the reverse. The military establishment of the Roman empire was so much contracted as it advanced in years, that whereas it amounted to 450,000 men in the days of Augustus, or more probably to 675,000, in those of Justinian it had sunk, as already noticed, to 150,000.* So far were the forces of Rome from being excessive in the later stages of the empire, or disproportioned to an empire still, after all its losses, holding so large and fair a portion of the earth under its dominion, that on the other hand they were miserably small ; and the disasters it underwent were mainly owing to the government of the Caesars never being able to equip an adequate army to repel the attacks of the barbarians. The force with which Belisarius reconquered Africa and recovered Italy never mustered seventeen thou- sand mem and the greater part of his successes were achieved by six tliousand legionary followers. It was not the weight of the national establishments, therefore, but the diminished resources of those ivho luere to pay them, which really occasioned the destruction of the empire. There are two other facts of vital importance in consider- ing the real causes of the gradual decay and ultimate ruin of the dominion of the legions. The first of these is, that the extent of the decay was, in the latter stages of Rome, very unequal in the different provinces of the empire ; and that while the central pro- vinces, and those in the neighbourhood of the metropolis, were in the most wretched state of decrepitude, the remote districts were in the highest state of affluence and prosperity. This important fact is abundantly proved by unquestionable authority, and it sheds a flood of light on the real causes of the ruin which ultimately overtook them all. The state of agriculture in the Italian plains under the Caesars, is thus set forth by Gibbon. Even before their * Gibbon, c. i. and c. xxxii. Agathias states the military establishment in its best days at 675,000, which is much more likely its real amount. Agathias, v. p. 157, Paris edition. 448 THE FALL OF EOME. time, in the days of Julius C?esar, Sicily and Sardinia had become the granary of Rome; and the first care of the dic- tator, in the outset of the civil wars, was to secure their possession. - " Since the age of Tiberius, tlie decay of agriculture had been felt in Italy ; and it was a just subject of complaint that the life of the Roman people depended on the accidents of the winds and the waves. In the division and decline of the empire, the tributary harvests of Egypt and Africa were with- drawn ; the numbers of the inhabitants continually diminished with the means of subsistence ; and the country was exhausted by the irretrievable losses of war, pestilence, and famine. Pope Gelasius Avas a subject of Odo- acer, and he affirms, with strong exaggeration, that in Emilia, Tuscany, and the adjacent provinces, the human species was almost extirpated." f Of the progress and extent of this decay, Gibbon gives the following account in another part of his great work : — "The agriculture of the Roman provinces icas insensibly ruined; and in the progress of despotism, which tends to disappoint its own purpose, the emperors were obliged to derive some merit from the forgiveness of debts, or the remission of tributes, which their subjects were utterly incapable of paying. According to the new division of Italy, the fertile and happy pro- vince of Campania, the scene of the early victories and of the delicious retirements of the citizens of Rome, extended between the sea and the Apennines, from the Tiber to the Silarius. Within sixty years after the death of Constantine, and on the evidence of an actual survey, an exemption was granted in favour of 330,000 English acres of desert and uncultivated land, which amounted to one-eighth of the ichole surf ace of the province. As the footsteps of the barbarians had not yet been seen in Italy, the cause of this amazing desolation, w hich is recorded in the laws, (Cod. Theod. Ixi. t. 38, 1. 2,) can be ascribed only to the administration of the Roman emperors." % Michelet observes, in his late profound and able History of France: — "The Christian emperors could not remedy the growing depopulation of the country, any more than their heathen predecessors. All their etforts only showed the impotence of government to arrest that dreadful evil. Sometimes, alarmed at the depopulation, they tried to mitigate the lot of the farmer, to shield him against the landlord ; upon this the proprietor * " Guarus et irarum causas, et summa favoris Anuoua momenta trahi : namque asserit urbes Sola fames, emiturque metus, cum segne potentes Vulgus alunt. Nescit plebes jejuna timere. Cmio Sicanias transcendere jussiis in ui'bes. Bellaque Sardoas etiam sparguntur in oras. Utraque frugiferis est insula nobilis arvis : Nee plus Hesperiam longinquis messibus ullpe, Nee Rom ana magis complerunt horrea, terrse." — LucAN, ill,, 60, 69. t GiBBO>-, vol. vi. 0. xxxvi. p. 235. X Ibid. vol. iii. c. xviii. p. 87. Edition in twelve volumes. THE FALL OF PtOME. 449 exclaimed he could no longer pay the taxes. At other times they aban- doned the farmer, surrendered him to the landlord, and strove to chain him to the soil ; but the unhappy cultivators perished or fled, and the land became deserted. Even in the time of Augustus efforts were made to arrest the depopulation at the expense of morals, by encouraging concubinage. Pertinax granted an immunity from taxes to those who would occupy the desert lands of Italy., to the cultivators of the distant provinces., and the allied kings. Aurelian did the same. Probus was obliged to transport from Ger- many men and oxen to cultivate Gaul.* Maximian and Constantius transported the Franks and Germans from Picardy and Hainault into Italy ; but the depopulation in the towns and the country alike continued. The people surrendered themselves in the fields to despair, as a beast of burden lies down beneath his load and refuses to rise. In vain the emperor strove, by offers of immunities and exemptions, to recall the cultivator to his deserted fields. Xothing could do so. The desert extended daily. At the commencement of the fifth century there was, in the Happy Campania., the most fertile province of the empire., b20,000 Jugera (320,000 acres) in a state of nature."! From the ceaseless struggle of the poor against the oppres- sion of the moneyed classes, the former being supported in the cities by the importations of food from Egypt and Libya, the fatal enmity of classes, the war of the industrious against the rich, was early experienced in the empire. The Emperor Junius Posthumus speaks of it as the unavoidable state of society.J He paints in energetic terms the unceasing swallowing up of the patrimony of the poor by the engross- ing of the rich. "It is fruitless," says he, "for the little proprietors to establish landmarks and divisions for their freeholds, as sovereigns separate their territories by chains of mountains and rivers. They are expelled from their estates by the ceaseless engrossing of wealth ; nor is there an end to the progress of the destroyer till he meets with another as rich as himself. \ Everywhere the people are chased from their heritages; they have no longer what they can call their own : that which once sufficed for the mainte- nance of a city will now scarcely suffice for the imsturcige of a single lord. The rich are like kings or nations : rivers and mountains are alone adequate to form the boundary of their estates. Well may the poor exclaim, * '' Arautiir Gallicana rura harlaris lohv.s, et juga Germanica captiva prsebent colla nostris cultoi'ibus." — Pkobi Episf. ad Senatum, in Vopesio. t MicHELET, Histoire de France, vol. i. p. 104 — 108. t " Dives et pauper inimici." — C. Junius Posthumus, Dedamatio xiii., ap. Paup. 2d. § " Parum est proximos sequare terminos et possessiones suas, velut quasdam gentes fluminibus montibusque distinguere. E finibus suis populus excluditur, nee uUus procedentis Jinis est, nisi quura in alterum diviteni inciderit." — Ibid. VOL. III. 2 F 450 THE FALL OF ROME. ' rich man ! jou are stronger than me, for one of jour strokes Tvill destroy me : but you offer more vuhierable points than me, and I can make you die a thousand deaths. How great soever may be your confidence in your posses- sions, where I am resolved to throw away my own life we are equal.'""' So general, indeed, was the depopulation of the empire in the time of Justinian, that it suggested to many of the emperors the project of repeopling those desolated districts by a fresh influx of inhabitants. "Justinian II. had a great taste for these emigrations. He transported half the population of Cyprus to a new city near Cyzicus, called Justinianopolis after its founder. But it was all in vain. The desolation and ruin of the provinces continued, and reached up to the very gates of Constantinople, which was maintained entirely by grain imporied at a loiu price from Egyjjf, and cattle from the Tauric Ghersonesus''\ Constantino expressly ordered that the fleet of Alexandria, which had previously fed Rome, should transport the grain of Egypt to Constantinople. I As a natural consequence of this entire or principal dependence of Rome on foreign or provincial raising of grain, there was, on any interruption of these foreign supplies, the greatest scarcity and even famine in the metropolis. All the vigilance of the emperors, which was constantly directed to this object, could not prevent this from taking place. Tacitus says, that in the scarcity under Claudius, there only remained a supply of fifteen days for the city.§ Famines in Rome were frequent under Augustus, Tiberius, Claudius, and Nero. The first of these emperors promulgated an edict which pro- hibited Roman senators or knights from purchasing lands in Egypt, lest, by checking the importation of grain, they should be able to starve Rome into submission. || Claudian laments that, after Egypt had been assigned to Constantinople, * "Est tamen et paupeiibus interim dolor : et ut facilius nobis noceri potest, ita vobis latins ; postremo placens licet tibi, opnm tuarum fiducia, dives, si mihi vivere non expedit pares sumus." — C. Junius Posthumus. t Finlay's Greece under the Romans. t Gibbon, chap, xvii., 2, 16. JVIilman's edition. § Tacitus, Annal., xii. 43. II " Augustus, inter alia dominatione, ariara vetitis nisi permissa, ingredi senatoribus aut equitibus Romanis illustribus, seposuit -^gyptum, nefame iirgeret Italiam, quisquis earn provinciam claustraque terra) ac maris quamvis levi pra}- sidio adversum ingentis exercitus insidisset." — Tacitus, Annal., ii. 59. THE FxVLL OF EOME. 451 Rome Lad come to derive its subsistance solely from Libya, and depended on the double chances of tlie seasons and the Avinds. " Nunquam secura futurl, Semper iiiops, ventique fidem poscebat et anni." * " When Africa revolted under Gildo, in the reign of Honorius, Rome," says Gibbon, " was on the hrink of starvation, from which she was only saved by large impor- tations from Gauir-\ The emperor Galliis offered a desert canton of Campania to the philosopher Plotinus, to establish a republic on the model of that of Plato. ;|; Rome depended entirely on her provinces ; domestic agri- culture was ruined. Domitian, with the view of clieckins: that ceaseless decline of agriculture, had prohibited in Italy, Gaul, and Pannonia, the planting of vines without the special authority of government ; and ordered the half of those growing to be destroyed. This prohibition continued in force for two centuries. § But it was all in vain : nothing could succeed in re-establishing the cultivation of grain in the central provinces of the empire ; and the Emperor Probus long after, by a new edict, enjoined the replanting of the vines, as the only species of cultivation which could be turned to a profitable account. || Claudian represents the Genius of ancient Rome bewailing, in pathetic and elo- quent terms, her dependence for food on the nations she had conquered, in words which all governments rendering their people dependent on foreign supplies would do well to bear in mind. " Formerly,'' the poet makes her say, " my prayers used to be that my legions might triumph on the banks of the Araxes, or that the consul might display his eagles at Susa ; now all I ask is a supply of food to avert the extre- mities of hunger. The province of Africa, which furnishes corn to my people, is under the power of Gildo. He inter- * De Bello Gild., v. 64, 65. t Gibbon, c. xxix. X PoEPHYRUS, Vita Plotini, see. 8 ; Denina, Rev. cV Italia, i. 244. § " Ad summam quondam id)ertatem fini, frumenti vero inopiam, existemans nimio vinearum studio neglegi arva, edixit ne quis in Italia uovellarit, utque iu provincias vineta sua direntur, relicta ubi plixrimum dimidia parte." — Suet., Domit., 7. II " Ut ille (Hannibal) oleis Africte pleraque per legiones, quamm otium reipub- licae atque ductoribus suspectum restoravit ; eodem modo hie (Probus) Galliam, Pannoniasque, et Moesorum collis vinetis replevit." — Aurelius, Victor. Ccesares, 37 ; EuTROP., ix. '' Gallis omnibus et Hispanis ac Britannis permisit, ut vites baberent, vinumque conficerent. — Vopisc. Prob., 240." 452 THE FALL OF ROME. cepts our supplies, and our food is at his mercy. He sells the harvests ^Yllich belong to the descendants of Romulus ; he possesses the fields purchased by mj blood. The warrior people which conquered the world, now dishonoured and in want, endures the miserable punishment of peace ; blockaded by no enemy, they are Ulce the inhabitants of a besieged town. Death impends at ererj moment : there remain only doubt- ful supplies for a few days. My greatness has been my ruin ; I was safer when my territory was more limited ; would that its boundaries were once more at my gates ! But, if I am doomed to perish, at least let me have a differ- ent fate : let me be conquered by another Porsenna ; let my city be burned by a second Brennus. All things are more tolerable than hunger.^' ''" Even so late as the time of Justinian, Rome was still in great part fed from Sicily; the land was fruitful and the people prosperous.! And in the year 552, Constantinople was mainly maintained by 260,000 quarters, annually furnished by the undecaying fertility of Egypt, which the crops of two thousand years had been unable to exhaust. ^ JSTor was tlie state of Greece in the latter years of the empire more favourable. " No description could exaggerate the miseries of Greece in the later stages of the empire. The slave population, which had formerly laboured for the wealthy, had then disappeared, and the free labourer had sunk into a serf. The uncultivated plains were traversed by bands of armed Sclavonians, who settled in great numbers in Thessaly and Macedonia. The cities of Greece ceased to receive the * " Advenio supplex, non ut proculcet Araxeii Consul ovaus, nostrseve premant pharetrata secures Susa, nee ut Rubris aquilas figamus arenis. Ha?c nobis, haec ante dabas. Nvmc pabula tantum Roma pvecor. Miserere tuse, Pater Optime, gentis — Extreraani dcfende fameni. ****** Tot mihi pro mentis Lybiam Nilumque dedere Ut dominam plebem bellatoremque senatum Classibus astivis alerent. Nunc inhonorus, erjens, perfert miserabiie pacis Supplicium, nidloque palam circumdatus hoste Obes&i discrimen habet. Per singula letum Impendet momenta mihi, dubitandaque pauci Prreseribunt alimenta dies." — Claud. De BeUo Gild. f Gibbon, vol. iv. cliap. 41, p. 35. Milman's edition. + Ibid., vol. iii. cbap. 40, p. 502. Milman's edition. THE FALL OF EOME. 453 usual supplies of agricultural produce from the country ; and even Thessalonica, with its fertile territory and abundant pastures, ivas dependent on foreign importation for relief from famine. The smaller cities, destitute of the same advantages of situation, would naturally be more exposed to depopulation, and sink more rapidly to decay. The roads, after the seizure of the local funds of the Greek cities by Justinian, were allowed to go to ruin, and the transport of provisions by land became difficult. When the Byzantine writers, after the time of Herachus, mention Greece and the Peloponnesus, it is with feelings of aversion and con- tempt.'' '" Asia Minor, at the same period, was not in a more prosper- ous condition. " In Asia ^Nliuor," says Finlay, " the decrease of the Greek race had been rapid. This decline, too, must be attributed rather to bad government than to hostile inva- sions ; for from the period of the Persian invasion, in the time of Heraclius, the greater part of that immense country had enjoyed almost a century of uninterrupted peace. The Persian invasions had never been very injurious to the sea- coast, where the Greeh cities luere luealthy and numerous ; but the central provinces were entirely ruined. The fact that extensive districts, once populous and wealthy, luere already deserts, is proved by the colonies which Justinian II. settled in various parts of the country. Population had disappeared even more rapidly than the agricultural resources of the country."! But while this was the state of matters in Italy, Asia Minor, and Greece — that is, the heart of the empire — its remoter provinces, Spain, Libya, and Egypt, not only exhibited no symptoms of similar decay, but were, down to the very close of the reigns of the Csesars, in the highest state of wealth, prosperity, and happiness. Listen to Gibbon on this subject in regard to Spain : — " The situation of Spain, separated on all sides from the enemies of Rome by the sea, the mountains, and intermediate provinces, had secured the long tranquillity of that remote and sequestered country; and we may observe, as a sure symptom of domestic happiness, that in a period of four hundred Fixlat's Greece under the Romans, 435, 4.^6. f Ibid., 517 454 THE FALL OF EOME. years, Spain furnished very few materials to the history of the Roman empire. The cities of Merida, Cordova, Seville, and Tarragona, were numbered among the most illustrious of the Roman world. The various plenty of the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms, was improved and manufactured by the skill of an industrious people ; and the pecuhar advantages of naval stores contributed to support an extensive and profitable trade. INI any particulars concerning the fertility of Spain may be found in Huet's Commerce of the Ancients, c. 40.''* The state of Libya was equally characteristic of the highest and most general prosperity, especially in relation to agri- cultural industry, at the time when Italy and Greece were thus languishing in the last stage of decrepitude and decay. " The long and narrow tract,'' says Gibbon, " of the African coast was filled, when the Vandals approached its shores, with frequent monuments of Roman art and magnificence ; and the respective degrees of improvement might be accu- rately measured by the distance from Carthage and the Mediterranean. A simple reflection will impress every thinking mind with the clearest idea of its fertility and cultivation. The country was extremely populous ; the inhabitants reserved a liberal supply for their own use ; and the annual exportation, particularly ofivheat, was so regular and plentiful, that Africa deserved the name of the common granary of Rome and of manhind." ^ " When Procopius," says the same author, " first landed in Libya, he admired the populousness of the cities and country, strenuously exercised in the labours of commerce and agriculture." | Nor was the condition of Egypt less prosperous in the last ages of the Roman empire ; nor its circumstances a less striking contrast to the miserable and languishing condition of the Italian and Grecian plains. It is thus described by Mr Finlay, § whose recent work has thrown so much light on the social condition of the inhabitants of the Roman empire in their later days : — " If the accounts of ancient historians can be relied on, the population of Egypt had suffered less from the vicious administration of the Roman empire, and from the Persian invasion, than any other part * Gibbo:n, c. xxxi. p. 351. t Hid., c. xxxiii. vol. vi. p. 20. X Ibid.., vol. iv. c. xliii. p. 12L Milmau's edition. § Greece under the Romans, 456, 467. THE FALL OF EOME. 455 of tlieir dominions ; for at the time of its conquest bj the Romans it contained seven millions and a half of inhabi- tants, exclusive of Alexandria ; and in the last days of the empire it nourished almost as great a number. The Nile spread its fertilising waters over the land ; the canals were kept in a state sufficient for irrigation ; and the vested capital of Egypt suffered little diminution, whilst war and oppression annihilated the accumulation of ages over the rest of the world. The immense wealth and importance of Alexandria, the only port which Egypt possessed for com- municating with the empire, still made it one of the first cities in the universe for riches and population, though its strength had received a severe blow from the Persian con- quest."* Sicily was another exception from the general decrepitude and ruin of the Roman empire in the reigns of the later Caesars. " In the island of Sicily, the great bulk of the population was Greek, and few portions of the Greek race had succeeded so well in jjreserving their luealth and property uninjured. " f But in the other parts of the empire, to the north of the Mediterranean, the agricultural population was, in the time of Heraclius, absolutely destroyed. " The imperial armies, which in the time of Maurice had waged an active war in Illyria and Thrace, and frequently invaded the territories of the Avars, had melted away during the disorders of the reign of Phocas. The loss was irreparable ; for in Europe no agricultural population remained to supply the means of forming a body of local militia, or even a body of irregidar troops." \ So extreme was the misery which generally prevailed, that infanticide was common, and called forth the special animadversion of the laws ; § and even in the time of Constantine, the father of one child had become entitled to several important immunities. || To such a length had the desolation of Italy gone in the time of Aurelian, that he had formed a design, which was only interrupted by his death, of repeopling Tuscany and the shores of Liguria by colonies of slaves; 11 and the generals of the Emperor Gratian sent troops of prisoners, taken from the * JosEPHUS, ii. 16. t FiNLAT, 515. t Ibid., 406. § Gibbon, vol. i. chap. 19, p. 442. Milman's edition. 11 Heinec. ad L. Pap. Pop.; and Denina, i. 238. ^ Denina, i. 241. 456 THE FALL OF KOME. Goths, Huns, Alaui, and others, to Parma, Moclena, and Reggio, as colonists. In the time of Theodosiiis the whole rich plain of Lombardj, between jNIilan and Bologna, had become a wilderness,'"' and the Campagna of Naples was already a desert. It may readily be supposed, that so entire a destruc- tion of the rural population of tlie Roman empire in the centre of its European provinces, as thus took place under the Emperors, must have been attended with the most fatal effects to their means of defence and national power. The inhabitants of towns, accus- tomed to sedentary occupations, and habituated to the luxury of baths, the excitement of theatres, the gratui- tous distributions of food, could not endure the fatigue, privations, and hardships of the military life. Substitutes were almost universally sought for ; and these, amidst the desolation of the country, could be found only in the semi- barbarous tribes on the frontier. Thus the defence of the empire came to be intrusted almost entirely to the arms of foreigners, and it was hard to say whether they were most formidable to their friends or foes. Nothing could supply the place of the rural population on the shores of the ]\Iediterranean. The legions gave a master to the Roman world, and the legions were recruited from Gaul, Germany, Britain, and Pannonia. Thus the dominion of the Capitol was really at an end long before it was formally subverted ; and Rome had received a master from the barbarians lonaj before the days of Alaric. This continued splendour and population of the towns, amidst the ruin of the country, in the declining periods of the Roman empire, has attracted the particular notice of one of the greatest historians of modern times. " In the midst," says Sismondi, " of the general desolation of the country, the continued existence and splendour of the great towns is not so easily explained; but the same thing is now to be witnessed in Barbary and Turkey, and in the whole Levant. Wherever despotism oppresses insulated man, he seeks refuge from its outrages in crowds. The chief Roman towns, in the first tliree centuries of the Empire, were in great part peopled by artisans, and freedmen, and slaves; * Dexina, Revol. cVItalia, i. 25L THE FALL OF ROME. 457 but the J contained also a number far greater than in our days of men ^lio, limiting tlieir wants to the mere support of existence, spent their lives in indolence. All that popu- lation was alike unarmed, unpatriotic, incapable of defence against a foreign enemy ; but as it was collected together, and at hand, it always inspired fear to domestic authority. Accordingly, to keep it quiet, there was established a regular gratuitous distribution of corn in the larger towns, and numerous spectacles in the theatres, the amphitheatres, and the circus, maintained at the public expense. The allowance of corn in Alexandria was fixed at 400,000 quarters;'" in the great towns in proportion. The careless- ness of the future, the love of pleasure and indolence, which have always characterised the inhabitants of great towns, distinguished the Roman provincials even to the latest days of the empire, and in the midst of their greatest calamities. Treves, tlie capital of the northern prefecture of Gaul, was not the only city of the empire which was surprised and pillaged by the barbarians, at the moment when its citizens, their heads crowned with garlands, were applauding with enthusiasm the victors in the games of the circus."! The frequent custom of recruiting the legions by means of slaves, in the later period of the empire, which was wholly unknown in the days of the Republic, reveals, in the clearest manner, the weakness to which, in respect of military resources, it had arrived, long before the external symptoms of decay were visible in its fortunes. Even in the time of Marcus Aurelius, the legions which were to combat the Quadi and Marcomanni, on the Danube, were recruited from the servile class. Justinian went so far as to declare, by a public edict, every slave free who had served in the army^ " At last the army came to be composed entirely," says Finlay, " of the rudest and most ignorant peasants, of enfranchised slaves, and naturalised barba- rians. This increased the repugnance, already sufficiently great, felt by the better class of citizens to enter the military life. The mercenaries formed the most valued and brilliant portions of the army, and it became the fashion to copy and admire the dress and manners of the * Procopius, Hist. Arcan. chap. 26. t SiSMONDi, Chute cle V Empire Romaine, i. 36. t Noyell, 81. 458 THE FALL OF EOME. barbarian cavahy." '"' In the time of Honorius, the villages, the fields, the rural burglis, Avere destitute of inhabitants. Scarcely even from a corner of the Alps could they draw soldiers; and even when enrolled, it was with tlie utmost difficulty that desertion could be prevented.! He offered freedom and two pieces of gold each to every slave who would enlist, but he could only raise thirty thousand men in the whole empire. J All the ancient historians concur in representing this impossibility of finding native soldiers in its central pro- vinces, as the main cause of the overthrow of the empire. And that this, and not the power of the barbarians, was the real cause of the destruction of the empire, is proved by the fact that, whenever they were well directed, the superiority of the legions was as clearly evinced as in the days of Marius or C?esar. Whenever the invaders met with a steady and well-combined resistance, they were defeated without much difficulty. The victorious reigns of Claudius II., Aurehan, and Probus, prove the immense superiority of the Roman armies when properly com- manded; but the custom which was constantly gaining ground, of recruiting the legions from among the barbarians, reveals the deplorable state of depopulation and weakness to which three centuries of despotism and bad administra- tion had reduced the Empire.§ But amidst this general prostration of the political and military strength of the Roman Empire, in consequence of the decline and desolation of the country, the great toivns still continued flourishing, and wealth to an extraordinary and unparalleled extent existed among the chief families, some of patrician, some of plebeian origin. That was the grand characteristic of Rome in its later days. The country, in the European part of the empire at least, was daily growing poorer; the cultivation of the fields was neglected; and the provinces, crushed under the weight of * FiNLAY, 246, 247. t " Certo e pure che verso la fine del Regno di Theodosio tutta quella pai-te di Lombai'dia ch'e tra Milano e Bologua una di piu grasse partite giacea quasi deserta et incolta. E la Campania nel regno di Napoli che e senza dubbio de piu felici terrene d'ltalia era condotto a tale che Onorio dovette in un sol priA-ilegio esentar dall ataglie piu de 500,000 giornate di terreno devenuto inutile ed infecondo."— Dexina, Jievol. cV Italia, i. 241, 242. t Gibbon, vol. iii. chap. 30, p. 76. Milman's edition. § Finlat, 117. THE FALL OF PtOME. 459 tlie direct taxes, wliicli had become unavoidable, bad in most cases sunk to half their former number of inhabitants. But the metropolis, whether in Italy or on the shores of the Bosphorus, was still the seat of opulence, luxury, and prosperity. The strength of Constantinople was suf&cient to repel the barbarians, and prolong the life of the Empire of the East, for many centuries after it had ceased to derive effective support from any of its provinces. It is recorded by Olympiodorus, that when Rome was taken by the Goths under Alaric, it was still inhabited by 1,200,000 souls, who were maintained chiefly by the expenditure of seventeen hundred and sixty great families, many of whom had £160,000 of yearly income, equal to at least £300,000 a-year of our money, besides a third more paid in kind. Such was the luxury in which, amidst the general misery, these moneyed patricians indulged, that there were at this time no less than three thousand theatrical singers and dancers; and the number of marble statues was computed to be equal to that of human beings.'"' And of the flourish- ing condition of the cities of the empire, especially those which were on the shores of the Mediterranean, even so late as the eighth century, Mr Finlay gives the following account : — " The strongest proof of the ivealth and prosperity of the CITIES of Greece, even in the last clays of the empire, is to be found in the circumstance of their being able to fit out the expedition which ventured to attempt wresting Constan- tinople from the grasp of a soldier and statesman such as Leo the Isaurian was known to be, when the Greeks deliberately resolved to overturn his throne. The rural districts in the eighth century were reduced to a state of desolation, and the towns were flourisliing in luealth. Agriculture was at the lowest ehh, and trade in a pros- perous condition!'^ Sismondi gives his valuable testimony to the same eff'ect : — " It was at this very time, tvhen industry in the country luas declining, that the toiuns of the provinces arrived at their highest degree of opulence. Adrian excited the emulation of their rich citizens, and he extended to the furthest extremities of the empire the luxury of * Dexina, i. 249. t FiNLAY, 544 ; Olympiodorus apiaZ Photium, 197. 460 THE FALL OF ROME. monuments and decorations, which had hitherto been reserved for the ilkistrious cities which scorned to be the depots of the civilisation of the world."* Such, in a few words, was the condition, generally speaking, of all the part of tlie empire to the north of the Mediterranean, in the decaying period of its existence. The towns were every- where flourishing ; but it was in Africa, Sicily, and Spain alone that agriculture was undecayed. And the decay and ruin of rural industry, and of the inhabitants of the country to the north of the ^lediterranean, left them no adequate means of resisting the attacks of the brave but artless bar- barians, who there pressed upon the yielding frontiers of the empire. Even the shipping of Italy had decayed : her carrying trade had been transferred to Egypt and Asia Minor. " The naval establishments," says Gibbon, " of iNIisenum and Ravenna had been gradually neglected ; and as the shipping and commerce of the empire were supported by commerce rather than by war, it was natural that they should most abound in the industrious provinces of Egypt and Asia."t Coexistent with this fatal decline in the rural population and agricultural industry, was the increase of direct taxa- tion, which was so keenly felt and loudly complained of in all the later stages of the Roman history. This is a branch of the subject of the very highest importance, because it leads to precisely the same conclusions, as to the real causes of the fall of Rome, as the others which have been already considered. It is well known tliat when the Romans first conquered Macedonia, the senate proclaimed a general liberation from taxes and imposts of every kind to the Roman citizens, as the reward of their victories. Nothing could be more agree- able to a Republican state, to whom the first of objects was to lay their obligations on their neighbours. This state of matters, however, could not long continue in an old state charged with the duty, and under the necessity, of keeping up a large establishment to maintain its dominion over its subject provinces. For some time, indeed, the wealth * SisMONDi, Chute de F Empire Romaine, i. 50. + Gibbon, vol. i. chap. 14, p. 447. Milmau's edition. THE FALL OF PtOME. 461 brought by the conquest of Asia and Egypt into the Roman treasury was so considerable that the necessity for taxes beinor levied on its own citizens was not felt : and as lon^: as the people had a direct share in the government, they took care to uphold an exemption in their own favour. But when one master was given to the whole Roman world, this invi- dious system of one class living upon another class was ere long abandoned. " Augustus," says Gibbon, " had no sooner assumed the reins of government than he frequently intimated the insufficiency of the tributes from the provinces, and the necessity of throwing an equitable proportion of the public burdens upon Rome and Italy. In the prosecution of this unpopular design, however, he advanced with slow and cautious steps. The introduction of customs was followed by the establishment of an excise ; and the sclieme of taxa- tion was completed by an artful assessment of the real and personal property of the Roman citizens, who had been exempted from every kind of contribution for above a century and a half."* Customs on foreign goods imported into Italy was the first species of taxation attempted on the Roman people. " In the reign of Augustus and his successors," says the same historian, " duties were imposed on every kind of merchan- dise, which, through a thousand channels, flowed to the great centre of opulence and luxury ; and in whatever manner the law was expressed, it was the Roman purchaser, and not the provincial merchant, who paid the tax. The rate of the customs varied from the eighth to the fortieth part of the value of the commodity. There is still extant a long, but imperfect, catalogue of Eastern commodities, which, about the time of Alexander Severus, were subject to the payment of duties. Precious stones, Parthian and Babylonian leather, cottons, silks, raw and manufactured, ebony, ivory, and eunuchs, were among the taxed articles. An excise also was introduced by Augustus, of one per cent on wliatever was sold in the markets or by public auction ; and this extended from the most considerable purchase of lands or houses, to those minute objects which commonly derive their value from their infinite multitude and daily consumption."! * Gibbon, vol. i. chap. 6, p. 261. f lUd., vol. i. chap. 6, p. 262. 462 THE FALL OF EOME. But ere long tliese indirect taxes proved unproductive, from the decline in the produce of the mines and contrac- tion of the currency, which will immediately be noticed, and recourse was had to the lasting scourge of direct taxes. One of five per cent on legacies and inheritances was first imposed by Augustus, and adhered to by him, in spite of the indignant murmurs of the Roman nobles and people. The rate was raised by Caracalla to a tenth of all inheri- tances ; and, when the privilege of Roman citizenship was extended to the whole provincials of the empire, they were subjected at once both to the former burdens which they had paid as provincials, and the new tax levied on them as Roman citizens.''^' From that time the direct burdens became daily more oppressive, and at length proved an almost insurmountable bar to industry. " The noxious weed,^"* says Gibbon, " sprang up with the most luxuriant growth, and in the succeeding age darkened the Roman world with its deadly shade. In the course of this history we shall be too often summoned to explain the land-tax, the capitation, and the heavy contributions in corn, wine, oil, and meat, which were exacted from the provinces for the use of the court, the army, and the capital." f These direct taxes soon became fearfully oppressive, and it is proved, by the clearest evidence, that they were among the leading causes of the decline of the empire. " The whole landed property of the empire," says Gibbon, " without excepting the patrimonial estates of the monarch, was tlie object of ordinary taxation, and every new purchaser con- tracted the obligations of the former proprietor. An accu- rate survey was made of what every citizen should contribute to the public service, and this was made anew every fifteen years. The number of slaves and cattle constituted an essential part of the report ; an oath luas administered to the proprietor's, which obliged them to disclose the true state of their affairs; and any attempt to prevaricate or elude the vigilance of the legislature was severely watched, and punished as a capital crime, which included the double guilt of treason and sacrilege. A large portion of the tribute was paid in money ; and, of the current coin of the empire, gold alone coidd he legally accepted. The remainder of the * Gibbon, vol. i. chap. 6, p. 268. + IhkL, p. 2G8. THE FALL OF ROME. 463 taxes, according to the proportion observed in the annual indiction, was levied in a manner still more direct and still more oppressive. According to the different value of lands, their real produce, in the various articles of wine or oil, corn or barley, vrood or iron, was transported by the labour or at the expense of the provincials, to the imperial magazines, from whence they were occasionally distributed for the use of the court, the army, and the two capitals, Rome and Constantinople. The commissioners of the revenue were so frequently obliged to make considerahle 'purchases^ that they were strictly prohibited from allowing any compensa- tion, or from receiving in money the value of those articles which were exacted in kind."'" " Either from accident or design, the mode of assessment seemed to unite the substance of a land to the form of a capitation tax. The return which was sent from every province and district expressed the number of tributary subjects, and the amount of the public impositions. The latter of these sums was divided by the former ; and the estimate, that each province and each head was rated at a certain sum, was universally received not only in the popular but the legal computation. Some idea of the weight of these contributions j96r head may be formed by the details preserved of the taxation of Gaul. The rapacious ministers of Constantino had exhausted the wealth of that province, by exacting twenty-five gold pieces (£12, 10s.) for the annual tribute of every head. The humane pohcy of his successor reduced the computation to seven pieces. A moderate proportion between these two extremes of extra- vagant oppression and transient indulgence, therefore, may be fixed at sixteen gold pieces, or about nine pounds sterling, as the common standard of the impositions of Gaul. This tax was so extremely oppressive, either in itself or in the mode of collecting it, that while the revenue itself was increased by extortion, it was diminished by despair ; a considerable part of the territory of Autun was left uncul- tivated, and great numbers of the provincials rather chose to live as outlaws and exiles than support the weight of civil society.'^! The Senatorial tax (corresponding to our * Gibbon, yoL ii. claap. 17, p. 86. t Ihid., vol. i. chap. 14, p. 422. Milman's edition. 464 THE FALL OF ROME. iucome tax) ^^'liicli was levied according to the declaration required of their property, was divided into several classes. Tlie most opulent paid annually eight pounds of gold, the next class four, the last two; and those whose poverty might have claimed an exemption, were still assessed at seven pieces.''' In the time of Valentinian, when the twelve centuries which marked the duration of the Roman empire had nearly expired, " the taxes were multiplied with the public distress : economy was neglected in proportion as it became necessary, and the injustice of the rich shifted the unequal burden from themselves to the people. The severe inquisition which confiscated their goods compelled the subjects of Valentinian to prefer the more simple tyranny of the barbarians, and to fly to the woods and mountains, or to embrace the yile condition of mercenary servants." t The enormity of this tax is explained by the circumstance that, as the great bulk of the people were slaves, the rolls of tribute were filled only with the names of citizens in decent circumstances. The taxable citizens in Gaul did not exceed 500,000 ; and their annual payments were about £4,500,000 of our money ; a fourth part only of the modern taxes of France.'^l The ordinary land-tax in the eastern provinces was a tenth, though in some cases it rose by the operation of the survey to a fifth, in others fell to a twentieth of the produce. It was valued for a term of years, and paid, unless when exacted in kind, commonly in money. § So extreme did the weight of the taxes become in the time of Diocletian, that, to use the strong expression of a contem- porary, " The proportion of those who received came to exceed that of those who contributed." || According to his religion and situation, says Gibbon, each order chooses either Diocletian, Valerius, Constantino, and Theodosius for the object of his invective; but they unanimously agree in repre- senting the burden of the public impositions, and particularly the land-tax and capitation, as the intolerable and increas- ing grievance of their own times. There was one circumstance which rendered the direct taxes peculiarly oppressive in the declining periods of the * Gibbon, vol. i. chap. 14, p. 434. Milman's edition. + Ih'id., vol. iii. chap. 35, p. 286. Milmau's edition. % Ihid., vol. iii. chap. 17. p. 92. § FI^-LAY, pp. 49-50. II Gibbon, vol. i. chap. 13, p. 394. Milman's edition. THE FALL OF ROME. 465 Roman empire, and that was the solid obligation, as the lawyers term it, which attached to the municipalities, into which the whole empire was divided, of making good the amount of their fixed assessment to the public treasury. Of course, if the municipality was declining, and the same quota required to be made up from its assessable inhabitants by the magistracy, who were responsible for its amount, it augmented the Ijurden on those who remained within its limits ; and if they dwindled, by public calamities or emigration, to a small number, it might, and often did, become of a crushing weight. This system is general over the East ; and its oppressive effect in the declining stage of states is the chief cause of the rapid decay of Oriental empires. There is a remarkable authentic instrument which attests the ruinous influence of this system in the later stages of the Roman dominion. This is a rescript of the Emperor Majorian, which sets forth, — " The municipal corporations, the lesser senates, as antiquity has justly styled them, deserve to be considered as the heart of the cities and the sinews of the Republic. And yet so low are they now reduced by the iujustice of magistrates and the venality of collectors, that many of their numbers, renouncing their dignity and their country, have taken refuge in distant and obscure exile.'' He strongly urges, and even ordains their return to their respective cities ; but he removes the grievances which had forced them to desert the exercises of their municipal functions, by directing that they shall be respon- sible, not for the ivhole sum assessed on the district, but only for the payments they have actually received, and for the defaulters who are still indebted to the public. ''' But this humane and wise interposition was as shortlived as it was equitable. Succeeding emperors returned to the con- venient system of making the municipal corporations respon- sible for the sum assessed on their respective districts, and it continued to be tlie general law of the empire down to its very latest day. Sismondi, in his Decadence de V Empire Romaine, and Michelet, in his Gaule sous les Romains, concur in ascribing to this system the rapid decline and depopula- tion of the empire in its later stages. But although there can be no question that the conclusions * Novell Marjorian, tit. iv, p. 34, GIBBO^-, voL vi. chap. 36, p. 173. yoii. III. 2 G 466 THE FALL OF EOME. of these learned writers are in great part well founded, yet this system of taxation, taken by itself, by no means explains the decline and fall of the Roman empire. It requires no argu- ment, indeed, to show that such a system of solid obligations, and of levying a certain sum on districts without any regard to the decline in the resources or number of those who were to pay them, must, in a declining state of society, be attended with the most disastrous, and it may be in the end fatal consequences. But it does not explain how society should he declining. That is the matter which it behoves us to know. When the reverse is the case — when industry and population are advancing, the imposition of fixed tributes on districts is not only no disadvantage, but the greatest possible advantage to a state — witness the benefit of the perpetual settlement to the ryots of Hindostan, or of a perpetual quit-rent to English landholders. And that, bad as this system was when applied to a decliuiug state of society, it was not the cause of the ruin of the Roman empire, and would not have proved injurious if the state had been advancing, is decisively proved by several con- siderations. I. In the first place, the taxes, and the system of munici- palities being responsible for a fixed sum, was not confined to the European provinces of the Roman dominion — viz., Italy, Greece, Gaul, Macedonia, and Roumelia, where the progress of decay was so rapid ; but it was the general law of the empire, and obtained equally in Spain, Libya, Egypt, and Sicily, as in the provinces which lay to the north of the Mediterranean. But these latter provinces, it has been shown, were, when overrun by the barbarians about the year 400, not only nowise in a state of decrepitude, but in the very highest state of affluence and prosperity. Tliey had become, and deserved the appellation of, " the common granary of Rome and of the world.'' They maintained the inhabitants of Italy, Greece, Rome, and Constantinople, by the export of their magnificent crops of grain. Spain was at least twice as populous as it is at this time, Libya con- tained twenty millions, Egypt seven millions of inhabitants. Sicily was in affluence and prosperity, while the adjoining plains of Italy were entirely laid out in pasturage, or returned to a state of desolation and insalubrity. It is in THE FALL OF ROME. 467 vain, therefore, to seek a solution of the decline of the empire in a system which, universally applied, left some parts of it in the last stages of decrepitude and decay, and others in the highest state of prosperity and affluence. II. In the next place, the taxes of the empire were by no means at first of such weight as to account, if there had been nothing else in the case, for the decay of its industry. The tax on inheritances, it has been shown, was at first five, afterwards ten per cent ; and the land-tax was ten per cent on the produce. The former tax of ten per cent on succes- sions is the present legacy-tax on movable succession to persons not related to the deceased in England ; and ten per cent on the produce is the tithe, and no more than the tithe, which has so long existed in the European monarchies, and, even when coexisting with many other and more oppressive burdens, has nowhere proved fatal to industry. Income of every sort paid ten per cent in Great Britain during the war — the land paid the tithe and poor's rate in addition — and the other taxes yielded a sum four times as great ; yet industry of every kind flourished to an extraor- dinary degree during that struggle. Ever since the termi- nation of the Revolution, the land-tax in France has been far heavier than it was in Rome, varying, according to the Cadastre, or valuation, from fifteen to twenty-five per cent ; yet, it is well known, public wealth and agricultural produce have increased in an extraordinary degree during that period. It was not, therefore, the weight of the impo- sitions, but the simultaneous circumstances which rendered the northern provinces of the empire unable to hear tliem, which was the real cause of the ruin of its industry. III. In the third place, whether the magnitude of the naval and military establishments, or the absolute amount of its public revenue, is taken into consideration, it is equally apparent that the Roman empire was at first not only noways burdened with heavy, but was blessed with sincju- larly light government impositions. Gibbon states the population of the whole empire, in the time of Augustus, at 120,000,000, or about half of what all Europe, to the west- ward of the Ural mountains, now contains ; and its naval and military establishments amounted to 450,000 armed men — " a force," says the historian, " which, formidable as 468 THE FALL OF EOME. it may seem, ^vas equalled by a monarch of the last centuiy, (Louis XIV.,) whose hingdom was confined within a single province of the Roman empii^e!''^ Compared with the military and naval forces of the European powers in time of peace, this must seem a most moderate public establish- ment. France, in the time of Napoleon, with 42,000,000 inhabitants, had 850,000 regular soldiers in arms, besides 100,000 sailors ; and Great Britain, in its European domi- nions alone, with a population of 18,000,000 souls, had above 500,000 regular soldiers and sailors in the public service. France has now, in peace, with a population of 32,000,000 souls, about 360,000 men, between the army and navy, in the public service ; and England, with a popu- lation of 28,000,000, upwards of 150,000, besides double that number in India. Russia, with 62,000,000 inha- bitants, has 460,000 soldiers in the public service. Austria, with 33,000,000, has 260,000. All these peace establish- ments are twice as heavy, in proportion to the numbers of the people, as that of Rome Avas in the time of Augustus ; and, in subsequent reigns, the number of armed men main- tained by the state was so far from increasing, that it was constantly diminishing, and in the time of Justinian had sunk down to 140,000 soldiers, maintained by an empire much more extensive than that of Russia at this moment. IV. The same conclusion results from the consideration of the absolute amount of the public revenue levied in the Roman empire, compared with what is extracted from modern states. Gibbon estimates the public revenue of the whole empire, in the time of Augustus, at " fifteen or sixteen millions sterling f\ and in the time of Constantino, the revenue derived from Gaul was £4,500,000 a-year.| The first of these sums is less than a third of what is now levied in time of peace on Great Britain, with less than thirty millions of souls, instead of the hundred and twenty millions who swelled the population rolls of the Roman empire : the last is little more than an eighth of what is now extracted from France, having nearly the same limits as ancient Gaul. Supposing that the value of money has declined, from the discovery of the South American mines, to a third of its * Gibbon, vol. i. chap. 1, p. 30. t IhUL, voL i. chap. 1, p. 37. X l^id., vol. iii. chap. 17, p. 93. THE FALL OF EOME. 469 former araount, (and at this time, owing to the decline of those mines, it has not sunk more,) still it is apparent that the public burdens of modern times are at least three times as heavy in proportion to the population, as they were in the Roman empire in the highest period of its greatness. As its strength and military establishment constantly declined after that period, there is no reason to suppose that the absolute amount of the public taxes was at any subsequent time greater, although unquestionably, from the decline in the resources of those who were to bear them, they were felt as infinitely more oppressive. And that these taxes were not disproportioned to the strength of the empire, when its resources were unimpaired, and its industry flour- ishing, is decisively proved by the extremely prosperous condition in which it was during the eighty years when Nerva, Trajan, Adrian, and the two Antonines filled the imperial throne. " At that period," says Gibbon, " not- withstanding the propensity of mankind to exalt the past and depreciate the present, the tranquil and prosperous condition of the empire was warmly felt and honestly con- fessed by the provincials as well as the Romans."''" — " They affirm," says a contemporary writer, " that, with the increase of the arts, the human species has visibly multiplied. They celebrate the increasing beauty of the cities, the beautiful face of the country, cultivated and adorned like an immense garden, and the long festival of peace which was enjoyed by so many nations, forgetful of their ancient animosities, and delivered from the apprehension of future danger." f Ancient as well as modern historians are full of com- plaints, in the later periods of the Roman empire, of the prodigious increase of wealth in the hands of the rich, and decline in the remuneration of industry to the poor. Their complaints on this subject are so numerous, and supported by such an array of facts, as to leave no room for doubt tliat they are well founded. Even so early as the time of Csesar, this state of things had commenced. It was then computed that there were in the state only two thousand citizens of substance : the engrossing of estates, and buying * GiBBO>% vol. i. chap. 2, p. 91. t Plin. Hist. Nat. vol. iii 5. 470 THE FALL OF ROME. up of the small proprietors, Tvas already complained of as a Yerj serious evil. ''' Indeed, it seems to have been generally true of the whole empire north of the Mediterranean, as Mr Finlay shows was the case down to the very latest periods in Greece, that while industry and population in the country were ruined, the towns were in a state of afflu- ence and prosperity. Even so early as the time of Plutarch, the accumulation of debts had come to be complained of as an extensive evil.f "These debts," says Finlay, "were generally contracted to Roman money-lenders. So inju- rious did their effects become to the provinces, that they afforded to one class the means of acciunidating enormous fortunes by forcing others into abject poverty. The pro- perty of the provincial debtors was at length transferred to a very great extent to Roman creditors. Instead of invi- gorating the upper classes, by substituting an industrious democracy for an idle aristocracy, it had a very different effect. It introduced new feelings of rivalry and distrust, by filling the country with foreign landlords. The weight of debts seems to have been the chief cause of revolutions in the ancient world. The Greeks could not long maintain the struggle, and they sank gradually lower in wealth, until their poverty introduced an altered state of society, in which they learned the prudential habits of small proprietors, and escape not only from the eye of history, but even of anti- quarian research.";!; This constant tendency of wealth, in the later periods of the Roman empire, to accumulate in the hands of the great capitalists, accompanied by the progressive deterioration of the condition of the middle and working classes, is amply proved and forcibly illustrated by Sismondi, in his admirable work on the Decline of the Roman Empire. " During the long peace," says he, " which followed the victories of Trajan and Marcus Aurelius, those colossal fortunes were accumu- lated which, according to Pliny, ruined Italy and the empire. § A single proprietor, by degrees, came to buy up whole pro- * " Non esse in republica duo millia hominum qui rem haberunt." — Cic. de Officiis, ii. 2L See also Gibbon, vol. iii. chap. 31, p. 113. Milman's editiou. >f- Tlsgi roll fjkr,iuy AMyii^inrdoci. " De ^re Alleuo vitando." — Plutarch. t Finlay, 90. § " Verumque coufitentibus latifundia perdidere Italiam, irnmo ac provincias." — Plin. Hist. Nat. THE FALL OF ROME. 471 vinces, the conquest of which had in former days furnished the occasion of many triumphs to the generals of the Republic. While this huge capitalist was amassing riches wholly disproportioned to the capacity of man, the once numerous and respectable, but now beggared, middle class disappeared from the face of the earth. In districts where so many brave and industrious citizens were to be seen in former times, alike ready to defend or cultivate their fields, were to be found nothing but slaves, who rapidly declined in number as the fields came to be exclusively devoted to pasturage. The fertile plains of Italy ceased to nourish its inhabitants ; Rome depended entirely for its subsistence on the harvests which its fleets brought from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. From the capital to the farthest extremity of the provinces, depopulation and misery in the country co- existed with eno7inous icealth in the towns. From this cause the impossibility of recruiting the legions with native Romans was experienced even in the time of Marcus Aure- lius. In his war against the Quadi and the Marcomanni, which had been preceded by a long peace, he was obliged to recruit the legions with the slaves and robbers of Rome."''^ It is impossible to give a stronger proof of the extent to which this enormous evil of the vast fortunes accumulated in the towns, and the entire ruin of industry in the country, had gone in the last days of the empire, than is to be found in the fact, that w^hen Rome was taken by Alaric, in the year 404 after Christ, the reduction of the capital was owing to the capture of Ostia by the Gothic general, where the harvests of Africa were deposited, f For long after that event, the dependence of Rome on foreign supplies still continued. In the year 584, it was still fed by corn from Egypt ; and even so late as the year 643, " the number of citizens still exceeded the measure of subsistence : their precarious food luas supplied from the harvests of Sicily or Egypt ; and the frequent repetition of famine * SiSMONDi, Chute de VE'irqnre Bomaine, i. 51. t " The com of Africa was deposited in Ostia in spacious granaries, for the use of the capital. As soon as Alaric was in possession of that important place, he summoned the city to surrender at discretion, accompanied by the threat that his proposal, if refused, should immediately be followed by the destruction of the magazines, on which the subsistence of the Roman people depended. The clamours of the people, and the terror of famine, subdued the pride of the senate : they listened and obeyed."— Gibbon, vol. iii. chap. 31, p. 129. Milman's edition. 472 THE FALL OF ROME. betrayed tlie inattention of the emperors to a distant pro- vince." ''' It may readily be conceived, that when this prodigious concentration of wealth in the hands of the great proprietors of towns, and ruin of industry in the country, came to co- exist with the solid obligations of the rural municipalities for the sura assessed on their districts, the burden of the public taxes, though light at first, compared with what is little complained of in modern times, came to be altogether overwhelming. This accordingly was the case in all the northern provinces of the empire in its later stages. What everywhere preceded their ruin was the desertion of the inhabitants, in consequence of the crushing weight of the public burdens. From the entire failure of the indirect taxes amidst the ruin of agricultural, and the imposition of taxation on urban industry, it had become necessary to make progressive additions to the direct taxes till they became exterminating. "Three great direct taxes," says Sismondi, " aUke ruinous, impended over the citizens. Tlie first was the Indictions or Land-Tax, estimated in general at a tenth of the produce, or a third of the clear revenue, and often doubled or tripled by the Siiper- Indictions which the necessities of the provinces compelled them to impose. Secondly, the Capitation Tax, which sometimes rose as high as 300 francs (£12) ahead on the free and taxable citizens ; and, third, the Corvees, or forced contributions in labour, which were for the service of the imperial estates, or the maintenance of the public roads. These direct imposts, in the declining days of the empire, so entirely ruined the proprietors of rural estates that they abandoned them in all quarters. Vast provinces in the interior were deserted ; the enrolment for the army became daily more difficult, from the disappearance of the rural population ; the magistrates of municipalities in town or country, rendered responsible for the assessment of their districts and the IcA^y of their quota of soldiers, fled the country, or sought under a thousand pretexts to escape the perilous honour of public office. So far did the desertion of the magistracy go in the time of Valentinian, (a. d. 364-375,) that when that cruel tyrant ordered the heads * Gibbon, vol. ii. chap. 45, p. 258, 268. Milman's edition. THE FALL OF EOME. 473 of three magistrates of towns in a particular province to be brought to him for some alleged offences, ' Will jour Impe- rial Majesty be pleased to direct/ said the perfect Florentius, 'what we are to do in those towns ivhere three magistrates cannot he foundr The order was upon this revoked."''' The disastrous state of the rural districts amidst this accumulation of evils is thus forcibly described by Mr Finlay : — ■" In many provinces, the higher classes had been completely exterminated. The loss of their slaves and serfs, w^ho had often been carried away by the invaders, had reduced many to the humble condition of labourers. Others had emigrated, and abandoned their land to the cultivators, from being unable to obtain any revenue from it in the miserable state to which the capture of the stock, the loss of a market, and the destruction of the agricultural buildings had reduced the country. In many of the towns, the diminished population was reduced to misery by tlie ruin of the rural districts in their neighbourhood. The higher classes in the country disappeared under the w^eight of the municipal duties they were called upon to perform. Houses remained unlet ; and even when let, the portion of rent wdiich was not absorbed by the imperial taxes was insufficient to supply the demands of the local expenditure. The labourer and the artisan alone could find bread ; the walls of cities were allowed to fall into ruins ; the streets were neglected, public buildings had become useless ; aqueducts remained unrepaired ; internal communication ceased ; and with the extinction of the wealthy and educated classes in the provincial towns, the local prejudices of the lower orders became the law of society." f It is a very remarkable fact, which decisively proves that the ruin of Italian apiculture in the late stages of the empire was entirely owing to foreign importation, that when, by the conquests of the Goths, these importations had come to cease, from the extinction of the wealth wdiicli was to pay for them, we learn from Cassiodorus that Italy not only became self-supporting, but in the reign of Theodoric the Ostrogoth, and successor of Alaric, actually, as in the days of the Republic, exported the necessary * SiSMONDi, Cliute de V Empire Eomaine, i. 44. t FiNLAT, 2LQ, 220. 474 THE FALL OF ROME. supplies to the legions in distant provinces. As a necessary consequence, Italy, albeit under barbaric rule and bleeding with Gothic conquest, regained its independence and consideration, and in some degree its felicity during the Republic. A more important fact, or one more clearly proving to what cause the ruin of the empire was really owing, has not been bequeathed by antiquity to modern times."' "Apulia and Calabria," says Gibbon, "under Theodoric, poured their tribute of corn into the granaries of Rome ; even the Pontine Marshes were drained by private adventurers : such was the extraordinary plenty which an industrious people produced from a grateful soil, that a quarter of wheat was sold for five shillings and sixpence." t Such, on a nearer survey, was the condition of the Roman empire which preceded its fall. From it may be seen how widely the real causes of its decline differed from the vague generalities of Montesquieu, that the ruin of the empire was the necessary consequence of its extension ; or the still vaguer declamations of the scholars, that it was the corrup- tion incident to great and long-continued wealth which enervated the people, and rendered them incapable of defending themselves against the Northern nations. In truth, both these causes did operate, and that too in a most powerful manner, in bringing about the ruin of the empire ; but they did so, not in the way supposed by these authors, but in an indirect luay, by inducing a new set of evils, which destroyed industry in the most important of its provinces, by depriving the industrious of a market for their industry, and rendering the public burdens overwhelming, by changing the value of money. The operation of these causes can now be distinctly traced by us, because we feel them working * Cassiodorus, Lib. iii. Epist. 44. See also Denina, Retol. cf Italia, i. 339, 340. " Reguaudo Teodorico non solamonte nonfu hisogno cli cercar Made straniare ma i granai dell' Italia bastorono ancoro a pascer gli esereiti del re che guen^cggi- vano Belle proviiicie lontane. II che avenue spezialmente nel 508 in tempo che ardeva nelle Gallic la guerra tra i Franchi Egli Ostrogoti padroni della Provenza. Cassio- doro ebbetante cura perche Roma avesse eziando abbondevole il vivere non cbe il necessario (per la quel citta, none trovo mai, quanto fnl ungo il regno de Teodo- rico, cbe si cercassero graui dell' Africa, come s'era costumato per tanti secoli,) ma potesse parimente fornir Milano e le provincie della Vinezia de granai cbe oppor- tunnicnte s'erano stabilite in Tortona en Pavia. Ne solamente si migUora allora, lo stato iV Italia, per le forze interne che la saviezza de governaiiti 1' accrebbe." t Gibbon, vol. iii. chap. 39, pp. 466, 469. Milmau's edition. THE FALL OF ROME. 475 among ourselves : their existence has not hitherto been suspected, or their effects traced bj philosophers, because no state in modern Europe but our own had come within the sphere of their influence. And to see what these causes really were, it is only necessary to recall, in a few proposi- tions, to the reader's mind, the general result of the foregoing deduction : — I. During the Republic, and till the commencement of the empire, agriculture was in the most flourishing state in Italy ; the exportation of grain was general to the distant provinces, the legions even in distant stations were fed by the produce of Italian agriculture, and it was in its sturdy, free cultivators that the legions were recruited which conquered the world. II. From the time of Tiberius, cultivation declined in the Italian and Grecian plains, and continued to do so to the fall of the empire. Pasturage came to supersede agri- culture ; population disappeared in the fields ; the free cultivators, the strength of the legions, were ruined ; the flocks and herds were tended only by slaves ; the small proprietors became bankrupt, or fled the country ; and tlie whole land in the European provinces of the empire fell into the hands of a limited number of territorial magnates, who resided at Rome or Constantinople, and mainly upheld, by their profuse expenditure, the prosperity of those capitals of the empire. III. In the midst of the general decline of rural industry in all the provinces to tlie north of the Mediterranean, the wealth and prosperity of the great cities remained undecayed. The small provincial towns were in great part ruined ; but the towns, especially such as were on the sea-coast, continued flourishing, and received in their ample bounds all the refluent population from the country. Rural industry languished and expired, but commerce was undecayed ; the fortunes of the great capitalists were daily accumulating ; and in no period in the history of mankind were urban incomes so great as in the city of Rome, on the eve of its capture by the Goths. IV. While this was the state of matters to the north of the Mediterranean — that is, in the heart of the empire — the remoter agricultural provinces of Spain, Sicily, Libya, and 476 THE FALL OF EOME. Egypt, Tvere in tlie very highest state of prosperity ; they fed all the great cities of the Roman world by their immense exportations of grain, and yet enough remained, down to their conquest by the Vandals under Genseric, to maintain a Tast population at home, greater than has ever since existed in those countries, in a state of affluence and comfort. V. Taxation, from the time of its first introduction under Augustus, ^Yas at first chiefly indirect, and by no means oppressive. Gradually, however, the produce of the indirect taxes failed, or became inadequate to the wants of the empire, and recourse was had to direct taxes, levied chiefly on landed property and successions. But these direct taxes were at first light, and not a third part of those levied on Britain or France during the war ; and the public establish- ments of the Roman government were not a fourth, in proportion to the population, of those now maintained by the great European monarchies during peace. VI. In process of time, however, the resources of the people, in the principal provinces of the empire, and especi- ally those to the north of the Mediterranean, declined to such a degree, that though the military and naval establish- ments of the empire were reduced to a third of their former amount, and became inadequate to defend its frontiers against its enemies, the direct taxes required to be continu- ally increased, till they became so oppressive as to destroy industry, and prove the immediate cause of the depopulation and ruin of the empire. VI I. When the importation of foreign grain into Italy was stopped by the conquest of that peninsula by the Goths, and the dispersion of the riches which had so long purchased it from Africa, agriculture revived in Italy ; and it not only became, under Theodoric, self-supporting and independent, but even exported subsistence to distant provinces of the Ostrogoth kinojdom. Such are the facts, as established by the unanimous and concurring testimony of all the best informed historians ; and now for the causes which produced these facts. They are set forth and supported by an equally clear and undis- putable array of authorities. Even so early as the latter days of the Republic, the THE FALL OF ROME. 477 system was introduced of feeding the Roman people Tvitli grain derived by tribute from the proyinces. In the time of Augustus, the annual quantity distributed to the poorer citizens of Rome was 1,200,000 modii, or 35,156 quarters. But Tiberius luent astepfuriher^andaGtuallifgave bounties on the importation of foreign grain. " An enormous quan- tity of grain,'' says Finlay, " was distributed in this w^ay, which was received as tribute from the provinces. Caesar found 320,000 persons receiving this gratuity. It is true he reduced the number to one half. The greater part of this grain was drawn from Sicily, Africa, and Egypt. In the time of Alexander, generally 75,000 modii was dis- tributed daily. This distribution enabled the poor to live in idleness, and was itself extremely injurious to industry ; but another arrangement was adopted by the Roman Govern- ment, which rendered the cultivation of land around Rome miprofitahle to the proprietors. A large sum was annually employed by the state in purchasing grain in the provinces, and in transporting this supply to Rome, where it was sold at a fixed price to the bahei^s. Augustus appointed an officer styled Prefectus Annonce, whose duty was to provide by Government purchases for the subsistence of the people. An allowance was also made to the private importers of grain, in order to insure a constant supply.''''" In this way, a very large sum was expended to heep grain cheap in a city where a variety of circumstances tended to make it dear. This singular system of annihilating capital, and ruining agriculture and industry, was so deeply rooted in the Roman administration, that similar gratuitous distribu- tions of grain were established at xVntioch and Alexandria, and introduced into Constantinople when that city became the capital of the empire." f The necessary effect of this system was the cessation of agriculture in Italy, the ruin of the small proprietors, and the engrossing of the land in the provinces by a few great landholders, who cultivated their extensive estates by means of slaves. " Riches, far exceeding the wealth of modern * It is curious to find Tacitus praising the establishment of bounties on the im- portation of foreign grain by Tiberius, without a word on the evil effects of the system. — Anjud. vi. 13. " Quibus e pi'ovinciis et quanto majorem quam Augustus rei frumentarite copiam advectaret." t Finlay, 53. 478 THE FALL OF ROME. sovereigns, flowed into the hands of the great proprietors ; villas and parks were formed over all Italy on a scale of the most stupendous grandeur ; and land became more valuable as hunting-ground than as productive farms. The same habits were introduced into the provinces. In the neighbour- liood of Rome, agriculture was ruined bj the public distri- bution of grain received as tribute from the provinces, and by the bounty granted to merchants importing to secure a maximum price of bread. The same system proceeded in the provinces ; and similar distributions at Alexandria and Antioch must have been equally injurious.^^'" When Con- stantino established his new capital on the shores of the Bosphorus, he was under the necessity of adopting, and even extending, the same ruinous system. " Wealthy indi- viduals from the provinces were compelled to keep up houses at Constantinople, pensions were conferred upon them, and a right to distributions of provisions to a consider- able amount was annexed to those dwellings. These rations consisted of bread, oil, wine, meat, and formed an important branch of revenue even to the better class of citizens. These distributions were entirely different from the pubHc ones at Rome, which were established as a gratification by the state to the poor citizens who had no other means of livelihood. The tribute of grain from Egypt was appropriated to supply Constantinople, and that of Africa was left for the consump- tion of Rome. This was the tie which bound the capital to the emperors, and the cause of the toleration shown to its factions. They both felt they had a common interest in supporting the despotic power by which the provinces were drained of money to support the expenditure of the court, and supply provisions for the people.^'t Although, hoAvever, these public distributions of grain in the chief towns of the empire had some eff'ect in checking the cultivation of corn in Italy, Greece, and Asia Minor, by depriving its cultivators of their best market, yei the private impo7iaiion of grain from these great corn countries must have been a far more serious and general evil. Gibbon states the number who received rations at Constantinople daily in the time of Constantino at 80,000, and in Rome in the time of Tiberius it was 180,000. Supposing the other * FiXLAT, 105. f Ibld.,1S7. THE FALL OF ROME. 479 great towns ^yere fed in the same proportion, perhaps a million of persons in the Roman world were nourished at the expense of the state on Egyptian or African grain. But a million of persons consume anniiallj a million of quarters of grain ; not a sixtieth part of the annual con- sumption of the British empire at this time, and probably not a two-hundredth part required by the 120,000,000 souls who composed the Roman empire in the days of the Antonines. But though the state paupers were thus but a small fraction of the whole consumers of foreign grain, yet the general importation luas immense, and became, ere long, so great as to constitute the entire source from which the population of Italy, as well as Constantinople and the adjacent provinces of Roumelia, Macedonia, and Greece, were fed. It was this general importation, not the gratuitous distributions, which ruined Italian agriculture ; for it alone was on a scale commensurate with the population of the Italian peninsula, and could alone account for its general ruin. Tacitus expressly says, it was the preference given to African agriculture, not the gratuitous distributions, which destroyed Italian cultivation. " At, Hercule, olim ex Italia legiouibus longinquas in provincias commeatus porta- bantur : nee nunc infecunditate laboratur ; sed Africam poTius et Egypt um exercemus, navibusque et casihiis vita populi Romani permissa est." * The supply of gi^ain for the Roman world was entirely obtained from Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, while Greece was maintained by corn imported from Poland.f It was not that the Italian and Grecian fields had become sterile : Tacitus expressly says the reverse, — " nee nunc infecunditate laboratur." But the country in which grain produced fifteen fold, as Italy did, could not compete with that which produced sixty or eighty fold on the banks of the Nile. In vain were colonies formed of old soldiers established in various parts of Italy, and with great advantage, by successive emperors. They could never compete in the raising of grain with Sardinia, Libya, Sicily, and Egypt ; they were speedily ruined, or bought up by a rich patrician in the neighbourhood, who invariably adopted the only profitable cultivation — that of cattle tended by * Tacitus, Annal. xii, 43. f Michelet, Histoire de France, i. 277. 480 THE FALL OF ROME. slaves. " Nor could the industry of the centre of the empire, where money was plentiful, comparatively speaking, and labour was therefore dear, stand against the competition of the remoter provinces, where it was scarce, and labour was therefore cheap. The ruin of Italian and Grecian agriculture from this cause is so evident, that it is admitted by the ablest advo- cates of an unlimited freedom in the corn trade. " The first effect of this system," says a late able and learned writer on the Liberal side, " luas the ruin of Italian agriculture. Tlie natural market for the corn of the Italian farmer was, to a great extent, destroyed by the artificial supplies obtained from the provinces. Hence, as Dureau de la Malle has remarked, (ii. 218,) the history of the seventh and eighth centuries of Rome presents this singular contrast — that the agriculture, the population, and products of Italy diminish progressively as she extends her conquests and power. The fatal influence which the gratuitous supplies from the pro- vinces would exercise upon the native agriculture, was per- ceived by Augustus ; but he abandoned his intention of altering the system, from a conviction it would be restored by his successor. The result was, that southern and central Italy, instead of being tilled by a race of hardy active farmers, themselves freemen, and working on their own land, was divided into plantations cultivated by slaves." f This explains how it came to pass that Spanish agriculture took such a start from the time of Tiberius; and how, in the * " I soldati licenziati non si contentavano di starsi in Tarauto ed in Anzio, ch' erano in quel tempo delle piu fiorite e deliziose citte d'ltalia, com' era mai possible che le colonic pigliassero radice ne borgbi de solati e de serti e nelle Cam- pagna piu besognivol d'essere ripopolate. Per la qual cosa, le terre cbe non rimasero del tutto deserte, si riunero in vastisswie tenute depoderi, eke i ricchi acquis- tavano de viano in memo. E cbe facivano secondo il solito costumi coltivare de gli scbiavi ; disordine oltre ogni credere distnittivo per diu efFetti inevitable : una la deminuzione notabile del frutto della terra, la quale spartita in piccole, por- zione, et coltivata da proprietari e da borgbesi, reude senza controversia maggior copia di frutti ; I'altro la dispersione della piu utile spezio del genere umano, quali sono i I'ustici labori, e i borgbesi d'umil fortuna. Quindo osservo' Plinio, correndo ancora il primo secolo del' imperio Romano. Cbe i vasti poderi avevano rovinata Italia. La feconditata deW Egifto, e di tante Provincie deW Africa ticine aV mare, delle hole di Sicllia e Sardigna potiva supplire al difitto delle cam- pagne d'ltalia o abbandonate, o mat cidtivate, o cambiate a bello studio in 2mrchi o c/iardini. Le scelte di soldati cbe si facevano per tutte le pi-ovincie adempiavano, la mancanza de soldati Italiani, de cui fuori delle Coorte Pretorii comincio d'essere scarcissimo il nuraero ancbi sotto i primi Imperadori." — Dexixa, Rev. d'ltalia, i. 151, 152. f Edinburgh lieview. April 18 4G. Xo. IGS. Page 370-371. THE FALL OF PtOME. 481 general ruiu of the empire, Spain, Africa, and Egypt ^Yere the only provinces which retained their prosperity. It will be recollected that it was in the reign of Tiberius that boun- ties were first given by the Roman Government to the private importers of foreign grain. Of the main dependence of the Western empire in its declining days on Africa, not merely for the necessary sup- ply of food, but even for the chief resources and strength of the state in the midst of the desolation of its European fields, Sismondi gives a striking account : — " The loss of Africa at this period, (a. d. 439,) was perhaps the greatest calamity which the empire of the West could have under- gone. It was its only province the defence of which cost no trouble ; the only one from which they drew money, arms, and soldiers, luitliout its ever requiring any hack. It was at the same time the granary of Rome and of Italy. The gratuitous distributions of grain at Rome, Milan, and Ravenna had, over the whole Itahan peninsula, destroyed the cultivation of grain. Experience had proved that the return could not pay its expense ; and the reason was, that the more fertile fields of Africa furnished a part of the har- vest destined for the nourishment of the people of Italy. The sudden stoppage of that supply by the conquest of Africa by the Vandals, caused a cruel famine in Italy ; which still further reduced its wretched inhabitants."* And so entirely did Constantinople become dependent on foreign importation of sea-borne grain from Egypt and the Ukraine for its support, that "when the Persians, in the year 618, overran Egypt, and stopped the usual supplies of grain from that province, the famine became so alarming, that the Government determined upon transferring the seat of empire to Carthage in Africa, as the most likely point from whence the dominion of Syria and Egypt might be regained." f Tlie latter of these had long been regarded as the most valuable province of the empire. \ When this entire dependence of the great cities in the northern parts of the empire, for centuries together, on Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt, is considered, it must with every rational mind cease to be a matter of surprise that its western * Sismondi, Chute de VEmpire Romaine, i. 233. + FiNLAT, 389. X FiNLAT, 392. VOL. in. 2 H 482 THE FALL OF ROME. and northern provinces declined in industry and population ; that these grain provinces to the south of the Mediterranean alone retained their numbers and prosperity ; and that under the constant decline, in the European provinces, in the market for agricultural produce, the rural population disappeared, and the recruiting of the army in the country became impossible. It is not surprising that while they were enrolling slaves in Italy, and enlisting barbarians on the Danube and the Rhine, to defend the frontiers, from Africa and Spain alone they drew supplies both of money and soldiers, without requiring to send back any. The latter provinces were the granary and garden of the empire ; the only part of it where rural industry met with remunerating prices or adequate encouragement. And the same circum- stances explain in a great degree how it happened that, while the rural districts of Italy, Greece, Asia Minor, and Roumelia were continually declining in population, rental, and revenue, their towns, especially on the sea-coast, were, down to the last days of their existence, in a flourishing condition. These towns were the seat of manufactures and commerce. It was by their capital that the vast corn trade by which all the cities of the empire were fed was carried on. It was their fabrics which mainly furnished the means of purcliasing the immense proportion of this grain, which, being imported by private importers, required to be paid for in some species of manufactured produce. And the reason why grain was raised so much cheaper, and therefore profit- ably, in Egypt, Libya, and Spain, than in Italy and Greece, was, partly, that the former of these countries were by nature blessed with a more prolific soil and a warmer sun than the latter ; and, partly, that as Rome and Constanti- nople were the two capitals of the empire, the greater part of its wealth was attracted, either by taxes, tribute, or the concourse of the rich, to them, and, consequently, the abun- dance of riches there rendered money cheap, labour dear, and cultivation, when exposed to foreign competition, unpro- fitable. But there was more in the case than this. Simultaneously with the vast and increasing importation of foreign grain, wliich at length destroyed cultivation in all the northern provinces of the empire, a continual diminution of its circu- THE FALL OF ROME. 483 lating medium was going forward ; and it was to tlie com- bined and contemporaneous operation of these two causes that the ruin of the empire is beyond all question to be ascribed. So early as the days of Tiberius, the abstraction of the gold and silver currency of the empire, by the incessant drain of foreign commerce, was loudly complained of by the Roman writers ; and there is the most decisive proof that, in the course of time, the supply of the precious metals in the empire became so inadequate to the wants of its inhabitants, that their value was enhanced to a great and ruinous degree. It was the commerce of the East which first induced this destructive drain upon the metallic treasures of the empire. " The objects," says Gibbon, " of Oriental traffic were splendid and trifling ; silk — a pound of which was esteemed worth a pound of gold — precious stones, and a variety of aromatics, were the chief articles. Tlie labour and risks of the voyage were rewarded with almost incredible profit ; but it was made on Roman subjects, and at the expense of the pubhc. As the nations of Arabia and India were contented with the pro- duce and manufactures of their own country, silver, on the side of the Romans, was the principal, if not the only instru- ment of commerce. It was a complaint worthy of the gravity of the senate, that, in the pursuit of female orna- ments, the wealth of the state was irrevocably given away to foreign and hostile nations. The annual loss is computed by a writer of an inquisitive but censorious temper, (Pliny,) at £800,000 sterling. Such was the style of discontent brooding over the dark prospect of approaching poverty."'"' Eight hundred thousand pounds a-year, equivalent to about two millions of our money, must have been a severe drain upon the supply of the precious metals in the Roman empire ; and we, who have seen in 1839 the Bank of England reel, and the United States bank fall, under the eflPect of an exportation of six or seven millions of sovereigns to buy foreign grain in a single year, can appreciate the effect of such a constant drain upon a state, the metallic resources of which were much less considerable than those of England at this time ; and which had no paper currency, either in the form of bills or notes, to supply their place. * Gibbon, vol. i. chap. ii. p. 90. 484 THE FALL OF EOME. The immense importation also of African and Egyptian grain, which continued from the time of Tiberius down to the very close of the empire, must have occasioned a great additional abstraction of the precious metals from the Roman world. It has already been shown that a very small pro- portion of the grain imported from these distant proyinces was remitted in the shape of tribute. By far the greater part, probably nineteen-twentieths of the whole supply, was imported by private merchants for sale, as it could be got from them cheaper than it could be raised at home. This imported corn, of course, required to be paid for in something. But the inhabitants of the countries from which it came — Spain, Sicily, Africa, and Egypt — for the most part slaves, blessed with a fine climate, requiring little covering, and nearly des- titute of artificial wants, did not require, and could not con- sume, any considerable amount of Italian or Grecian fabrics. Thus by far the greatest part of the price of the imported grain was paid in gold and silver, for which there is a con- stant demand in all countries, savage or civilised. " Nearly the whole commerce which Italy carried on," says Denina, " in the later stages of the empire, was the most ruinous in which a nation can be engaged ; for it consisted of subsis- tence and luxuries imported, and money exported — for the Italians had no manufactures to compensate the luxuries and necessaries which were introduced." '"' The thing was unavoidable. A nation which imports foreign grain largely, must in all ages export the precious metals as largely, because the corn, of course, is brought from those countries where it is raised the cheapest — and the countries where this is the case are those where labour is cheap, money scarce, and artificial wants unknown. Money is what these countries want, and money is what their surplus produce is nearly all exchanged for. In addition to this, the mines which supplied the Roman * " Tutto il commercio d'ltalia nel tempo di Gildone era meramente passive e rovinoro ; parcio che deviansi Cerean di fuore non meuo le cose piu necessarie al sostentamento della vita che quelle che servivano alia morbidezza, ed al lusso : e non appai^ise punto che s'estrausse d'ltalia alcune genere di manifatture che potesse fare il compenso di cio che mancava. Cosi che metteudo iusieme anclie le coutribuzione che gia di buon tempo si pagavano a barbari, per le quali si faccono estraordenarie esazioni in Roma stessa I'ltalia aureble dovuto in breve tempo essere esausta di denaro se non che per avventura I'entrate che molti de grandi di Roma godevano in altre provincie, potevano swpplire in parte al difetto deUe cose d'ltalia." — Denixa, Revol. d'ltalia, i. 244. THE FALL OF ROME. 485 AYorlcl failed to a considerable extent under the emperors. " The poverty of Greece, as of the whole empire," says Jacob, " was fm-ther increased by the gradual rise in the value of the precious metals; an evil which began to be generally felt about the time of Nero, and affected Greece with great severity, from the altered distribution of wealth in the country with which it was attended. Greece had once been rich in mines, which had been a source of wealth and prosperity to Siphnos and Atticus, and had laid the foundation of the power of Philip of Macedon. The fiscal measures of the Romans soon rendered it a ruinous specu- lotion for individuals to attempt ivorhing mines of the pre- cious metals; and, in the hands of the state, they soon proved unprofitable. Many mines were exhausted ; and even though the value of the precious metcds ivas enhanced, some mines beyond the sphere of the Roman power were abandoned from those causes, which, after the second century of the Christian era, produced a sensible diminution in the commercial transactions of the Old Hemisphere."* Greece shared in the general decay : her commerce and manufac- tures, being confined to supplying the consumption of a diminished and impoverished population, sunk into insignifi- cance. An accumulation of debts became general through- out the country, and formed an extensive evil, as already observed, in the time of Plutarch, f As this great diminution in the supply, and drain upon the treasures of the precious metals in the time of the emperors, lowered the value of every species of produce, so it proportionally augmented debts, and swelled the already overgrown fortunes of the capitalists. What Finlay says of Greece was true of the whole European provinces of the empire, — " The property of the Grecian debtors ivas at last transferred to a very greed extent to the Roman creditors!' \ This again produced another effect upon the manners of the inhabitants of the great cities, which had an equally powerful effect in increasing the drain upon that portion of the precious metals which was employed in the public currency. So vast was the addition which the contraction of the currency, and * Jacob's Historical Inquiry into the Production and Consumption of the Precious Metals, i. 35, 42. t Finlay, 88. J Ibid., 90. 486 THE FALL OF ROME. constant drain of the precious metals to paj for importa- tions, made at once to the fortunes of the rich and the misery of the poor, that a contemporary annalist, Sidonius Appol- linarius, calls the moneyed patricians " the sole oiuners of the empire^''' The rich patricians of Rome, Antioch, and Constantinople, possessed of colossal fortunes to which nothing in modern times will bear a comparison, and nursed in habits of luxury and expense beyond anything we can even conceive, daily augmented the proportion of their immense incomes which was devoted to the purposes of extravagance. " The historians of the second and third centuries,'' says Finlay, " are filled with lamentations on this subject/'f It is not surprising that it was so. Men possessed, in private sta- tions, of as much as three or four hundred thousand pounds a-year of modern money, could not get through their in- comes without indulging in the habitual purchase of the most costly articles. Society in this w^ay had come to verify the saying of Bacon — " Above all things, good policy is to be used that the treasure and money in a state he not gathered intofeiv hands. For, otherwise, a state may have a great stock and yet starve. And money is like muck, not good unless it be spread." Hence the consumption and permanent fixing of gold and silver in the form of plate and costly ornaments, increased in the great families down to the very close of the empire ; and w^hile the currency was constantly declining, and prices in consequence falling in the provinces, the colossal capitalists of Rome and Constantinople were daily absorbing more of the precious metals in these beautiful but unproductive objects. The quantity of gold and silver moulded into the form of vases, statues, tripods, and personal ornaments, which was accumulated in Rome at the time it was taken by the Goths, * " La somma dell imposizione s'esigiva per parte del Fisco dall corpo della citta, perche la scarcita del denaro, la miseria et rirapoteuza de particolari di soddisfare a gli imposti costringavano i eorporati a pagare del proprio. All estorsioni de magistrati, de gi-andi, s'aggiunnsero novellamente quelle delle usui^ai, la potenza de quali fu tale e tanta in questo secolo, ehe Sidonio Appollouaro ebbe a ehiamargli i soli padroni del' Imperio Romano. Perche qiiando cessa i i tributi delle provincie fuencora consumato il denaro d'ltalia a stipcndiare i re bai'bari, la scarcite del denaro, et la necessite ogni volta maggiore eh'ebbero gli Imperadori d'impor tri- buti, ebbe al fine ridotta gli Italiani a tutti gli estremi a cui riducon si d'ordinarie gli indebitati e i mal awiati mercanti, d'aceelerarsi la rovina con vie di piu svantaggiori contratti." — Denina, Revol. d'ltalia, i. 299. t Finlay, 89. THE FALL OF EOME. 487 ^voiild exceed belief, were it not attested bj the unanimous testimony of all the contemporary writers. Great part of it was thrown into the Tiber, where it still remains covered by the alluyial deposits of fourteen centuries ; the most precious of the spoils were buried with Alaric in the bed of a stream in Calabria, where that redoubtable conqueror was overtaken by the common fate of mortality. The place where he was interred was kept a profound secret, and the slaves who dug his grave in the bed of the river, of which the course had been turned aside for the purpose, were put to death, and buried with him and his treasures ; and the river itself was immediately led into its old channel, that its ceaseless flow Diight secure, as it since has done, the grave of the mighty chief from disturbance, and enable him to present himself loaded with his earthly spoils in the land of spirits.'" The concurring operation of these causes produced, in the three last centuries of the Roman empire, a very great scarcity in the supply of the precious metals for the purposes of the public currency, and consequently a most distressing fall in prices, and diminution in the remuneration of industry, accompanied by a proportional increase in the weight of debt and taxes. And the progressive effect of these changes appeared in the clearest manner, in the repeated changes which were made by successive emperors in the value of the gold and silver coins which passed current in the empire. Gold became progressively so scarce in proportion to silver, that the proportion between the two, which at first had been 1 to 10 in the time of Augustus, rose in time to 1 in 12-1^, and was fixed by Constantine the Great at 1 to 14 2-5ths.t In consequence of this rise in the value of gold — the pre- cise counterpart of what was experienced in Great Britain in the later years of the war, when a light guinea sold for 25s. — the quantity of gold in the aureus, or chief gold Roman coin, was progressively diminished, till it came to contain little more than half its former weight of that pre- cious metal. The learned Greaves has shown, after diligent inquiry, that while in the time of the Antonines the aureus weighed 118 grains, in the time of Majorian, in the fifth * Gibbon, v. 329. t Arbuthnott on Ancient Coins, c. 5. Gibbon, i. 90, c. ii. 488 THE FALL OF ROME. century, it had come to weigh only 68/" This is a clear indi- cation," that 68 grains of gold were then equal in value to what 118 grains had been three centuries before; for Majorian, by a special decree, ordered all aurei of whatever reign, the Gallic solidus alone excepted, to pass, not accord- ing to weight, but standard4 So thoroughly was this increase in the value of gold understood by the tax-gatherers, that they "exacted the whole payment in gold; but they refused the current coin of the empire, and would accept only such ajicient pieces as were stamped with the names of Faustina or the Antonines. The consequence was, that the municipal magistrates, who were responsible for the amount assessed on their district, renounced their dignity and country, and took refuge in distant and obscure exile." J That is the most decisive proof to what a grievous extent the currency had, from the operation of the causes which have been mentioned, come to be contracted ; for as gold constitutes, from its superior value, at least nine-tenths of the circulating medium of every civilised state, so great a rise in its value could only have been occasioned by a very great contraction of the whole currency. AYe know in v.hat state the metallic currency of Great Britain was when the light guinea was selling for twenty-five shillings. In the latter days of the empire, when the invasions of the barbarians began, and its provinces were liable to be pierced through and overrun by columns of their predatory hordes, the universal and well-founded terror produced a general hoarding of the precious metals, which entirely withdrew them from circulation, until they were forced from the trembling inhabitants by threats of massacre or conflagration. The effect of this, in contracting the cur- rency, and causing the little that remained to disappear altogether from the circulation, of course was prodigious. It lowered to almost nothing the money price of every species of industry, and proportionally augmented the weight of public and private debts — the subject of such loud and con- stant complaints from ancient historians. " In the reign of Justinian,'' says Gibbon, " a rapid decrease was felt in the * Greayes on Ancient Coins, i. 329, 331. f Gibbon, vol. vi. c. 36, p. 173. X Gibbon, c. xxxvi. vol. iii. p. 305. " Fessas provincialium varia atque niultiplici tributorum exactione, fortunas et extraordinariis fiscalium solutionuni oueribus attvitas," is the strong expi'ession in Majoriau's Novell, tit. 34. THE FALL OF ROME. 489 forced and circulating capitals which constitute the national wealth. His revenues, in consequence, were not equal to his expenses. Eyerj art was tried to extort from the people their gold and silver : and fathers were sometimes compelled to prostitute their daughters to appease the collectors. He lived with the reputation of a hidden treasure ; but he bequeathed to his successor only the payment of his debts."^ Nor was this evil confined to the latest periods of the empire of the West — the years which immediately preceded its fall. From the time of Com modus, who succeeded Marcus Antoninus, the incursions of the barbarians into the northern provinces of the empire had been severely felt ; and from the era of the separation of the empires of the East and West, they were almost perpetual, and sometimes extended far into its interior provinces. The effect of these alarms and dangers, in producing a universal disposition to hoard, and consequently rendering money everywhere scarce, prices cheap, and debts and taxes oppressive, was very great, and may be regarded as one of the chief causes of the excessive and crushing weight which the direct burdens of the state acquired in the later periods of the empire. The resource so well known, and so often had recourse to with the happiest eflPects, in modern times, to supply the void produced by a temporary or permanent drain of the precious metals, was unknown in antiquity. They had no paper currency. Even bills of exchange were unknown. These, as is well known, were a contrivance of the Jews, in the Middle Ages, to transport their vrealth in a commodious form, when threatened with persecution, from one country to another. To what an extent paper of these various kinds has come to supply the place of gold and silver, may be judged of by the fact, that, during the war, the paper cur- rency of Great Britain and Ireland rose to £60,000,000 sterling ; and that, at the present time, the private bills in circulation in it are estimated at £132,000,000 sterling. But this admirable resource, by which an accidental or temporary dearth of the precious metals is supplied by a paper currency, circulating at par with it, and fully supply- ing, as long as credit lasts, its place, was unknown in the ancient world. Gold, silver, and copper were their sole * Gibbon, vol. iii. c. xl. p. 509, 510. Milmau's edition. 490 THE FALL OF EOME. circulating mediums ; and consequently, when tliej were progressively withdrawn, by the causes which have been mentioned, there was nothing left to supply their place. Instantly, as if by the stroke of a fell necromancer, dis- asters of every kind accumulated on the wretched inhabi- tants. Credit was violently shaken ; money disappeared ; prices fell to a ruinous degree ; industry could obtain no remuneration ; the influence and ascendency of realised capital became irresistible ; and the only efficient power left in the state was that of the emperor, who wrenched his taxes out of the impoverished hands of his subjects, or of the creditors and landlords, who, by legal process, exacted their debts from their debtors, and drove them to despera- tion. This was exactly the social state of the empire in its declining days. We can appreciate its horrors, from having had a foretaste of them during the commercial crises with which, during the last twenty-five years, this country has been visited. From what has now been said, it is evident that the two circumstances which occasioned the fall of the Roman empire, were the destruction of its domestic agriculture, by the im- portation of grain from its distant provinces, and the accumulation of debts and taxes, arising from the contrac- tion of the currency, induced by many concurring circum- stances. If these causes be attentively considered, it will be found that they not only afford a perfect solution of its fall, but explain how it happened at the time it did, and had not occurred at an earlier period. They show what it was which, slowly but steadily wasting away the vitals of the empire, successively destroyed its rural population and agricultural industry, and at length crushed its property under the increasing load of debts and taxes. They explain how it happened that the indirect taxes, which at first were sufficient, with a moderate imposition of five per cent on inlieritances, to support the large military and naval esta- blishments of Augustus, became gradually unproductive, and were at length succeeded by direct taxes on land, of severe, and in the end destructive amount, yet inadequate to uphold even the Lilliputian military and naval forces of Justinian. They show what every page of contemporary history demon- strates, that it was neither the superior military power of THE FALL OF EOME. 491 the barbarians, nor the diminished skill and courage of the legions, which occasioned the overthrow of the mighty fabric, but the icasting aiuay of its internal resources which was the real cause of its decay. They tell us that it was not the timidity of tlie legions, but the inability of Government to array them in suficient strength, which rendered them un- equal to the contest with an enemy whom, during the vigour of the state, they had so often repelled. They explain how it happened that Italy and Greece had become deserts in their rural districts, before one of the barbarians had crossed either the Alps or the H?emus ; and how Africa, Spain, and Egypt, alone of the provinces, retained their prosperity, when rural industry was wellnigh extinct in all other parts of the empire. Lastly, they explain how it happened that, while the rural districts to the north of the Mediterranean were so generally relapsing into a state of desolation, the great cities of Greece and Italy long retained their prosperity, and the wealth of the capitalists and great proprietors who inhabited them was continually increasing, while all other classes were ground to the earth under the weight of public or private burdens. It must appear, at first sight, not a little extraordinary that the very causes which thus evidently led to the destruc- tion of Rome — viz., the unlimited importation of foreign grain and contraction of the currency — are those which have been most the object of the policy of the British Govern- ment, for the last quarter of a century, by every possible means to promote in this country. They were imposed upon Rome by necessity. The extension of the empire over Spain, Africa, and Egypt, as well as the magnanimous policy of its government towards all its subjects, rendered a free trade in grain with the provinces, and large importations from the great corn countries, unavoidable. Public misfor- tunes, the increasing luxury of the rich, that very great importation of grain itself, the failure of the Spanish and Grecian mines, and the entire want of any paper currency to supply the place of the metals thus largely abstracted, necessarily and unavoidably forced this calamitous contrac- tion of the currency upon tlie Roman empire. But tlie British policy has adopted the same principles, and done the same things, when no necessity or external pressure rendered 492 THE FALL OF ROME. it imaToidable. A free trade in grain is to be introduced, not in faTOur of distant j^rovinces of the empire, but of its neighbours and its enemies. The currency has been con- tracted, not by public calamities, or any lasting deficiency in the means of supplying tlie failure of the ordinary sources of gold and silver, but by the fixed determination of Govern- ment, carried into execution by repeated acts of Parliament in 1819, 1826, and 1844, to abridge the paper circulation, and deprive the nation of the benefit of the great discovery of modern times, by which the calamitous eflfects of the diminution in the supply of the precious metals throughout the world have been so materially prevented. Such a result must appear under all circumstances strange, and would be inexplicable, if we did not reflect, that the same impulse which was communicated to the measures of Government in Rome, by the influence of the capitalists and the clamorous inhabitants of great towns, is equally felt in the same stage of society in modern times. The people in our great cities do not call out, as in ancient days, for gra- tuitous distributions of corn from Libya or Egypt ; but they clamourjust as loudly for free trade in grain with Poland and the Ukraine, which has the effect of swamping the home- grower quite as completely. The great capitalists do not make colossal fortunes by the plunder of subject provinces, as in the days of the Roman proconsuls ; but they never cease to exert their influence to procure a contraction of the currency by the measures of Government, which answers the purpose of augmenting their fortunes at the expense of the industrious classes just as well. Political writers, social philosophers, practical statesmen, fall in with the prevailing disposition of the most influential classes ; they deceive themselves into the belief that they are original, and pro- mulgating important truths, when they are merely yielding to the pressure of the strongest, or at least the most noisy, class at the moment in society, and of that one which is best able to remunerate their exertions. The Reform Bill gave threeflfths of the British representation to the members for burghs. From that moment the eventual adoption of legislative measures favourable to the interests of capital, and agreeable to the wishes of the inhabitants of towns, how destructive soever to those of the countrv, was as cer- THE FALL OF ROME. 493 tain as the daily distributiou of Egyptian grain to the inha- bitants of Rome, Antioch, and Constantinople was, when the mob of these cities became, from their formidable num- bers, an object of dread to the Roman Government. The only answer which the partisans of free trade in grain have ever attempted to these considerations is, that the ruin of the agriculture in the central provinces of the Roman empire was owing, not to the importation of foreign corn as a mercantile commodity, but to its distribution gratuitously to the poorer citizens of Rome, Constantinople, and some of the larger cities in the empire. They admit, in its fullest extent, the decay of domestic agriculture, and consequent ruin of the state ; but allege it was owing to this gratuitous distribution, which was in fact a poor-law, and not to the free trade in grain. '" But a very little con- sideration must be sufficient to show that this is an elusory distinction ; and that it was the unrestricted admission of foreign wheat by purchase which in reality, coupled with the contraction of the currency, destroyed the dominion of the legions. I. In the first place, the number who received these gratuitous distributions was, as already shown, so small, when compared to the whole body of the grain-consuming population, that they could not materially have affected the market for agricultural produce in Italy. Not more than 150,000 persons received rations in Rome daily, and per- haps as many in the other cities of Italy. What was this in a peninsula containing at that period 1 6,000,000 or 18,000,000 of souls, and with 2,300,000 in its capital alone ? f It is evident that the gratuitous distributions of grain, taking those at their greatest extent, could not have embraced a fiftieth part of the Italian population. What ruined the agriculturists, who used to feed the remaining forty-nine fiftieths '? The unlimited importation of cheap grain from Spain, Egypt, Sicily, and Libya, and nothing else. II. In the next place, even if the gratuitous distributions of grain had embraced twenty times the number which they * See Edinburgh Review. N"o. 168. April 1846. t There are now 20,000,000 inhabitants in Italy, and it was certainly as popu- lous in the time of Augustus, when Piome alone, which now has 180,000, contained 2,386,000 souls. 494 THE FALL OF ROME. did, nothing can be clearer than that the effect on agricul- ture is the same, whether cheap foreign grain is imported by the private importer, or bought and distributed bj the Government. If the home-grower loses his marhet, it is the same thing to him whether he does so from the effects of private importation or public distribution ; whether his for- midable competitor is the merchant, who brings the Libyan grain to the Tiber, or the Government, which exacts it as a tribute from Sicily or Egypt. The difference is very great to the urban population, whether they receive their foreign grain in return for their own labour, or get it doled out to them from the Government store as the price of keeping quiet. But to the rural cultivator it is immaterial whether destruction comes upon him in the one way or the other. It is the importation of foreign grain which ruins him ; and the effect is the same, whether the price paid is the gold of the capitalist or the blood of the legions. In truth, both the Government of the Caesars in ancient, and that of Great Britain in modern times, in pursuing the policy of establishing free trade in grain, encouraging foreign importation of general subsistence, and either contracting, or doing nothing to counteract the contraction of the currency, in the latter stages of their respective empires, were striving to resist the operation of a great law in the moral world, intended to check the growth and prevent the perpetuity of nations. " It is to no purpose," said Dr Johnson, " to tell one that eggs are a penny the dozen in the Highlands, and twopence a-piece in London ; that is not because eggs are many, I)ut because pence are few!' This simple observation points to a law of incalculable importance and ceaseless operation in the moral world. It is continually checking the accumulation of mankind in their old localities, and favouring their dispersion and increase in the distant parts of the earth. The accumulation of wealth in the seats of ancient civilisation, in the centre of extensive dominions, renders money cheap, and therefore labour dear in such places. Agricultural industry, incapable of receiving exten- sive aid from the application of machinery and the division of labour, raises its produce at a much more expensive rate in the old state than in the comparatively new one. The centre of a great empire is always undersold in the production THE FALL OF ROME. 495 of rucle produce by its extremities ; it always can undersell tliem in manufactures. This simple fact comes in process of time to hare a decisive effect upon the policy of govern- ments and the fate of nations. The consumers in towns, the capitalists who employ labom\ see with envious eyes the high price of labour and the necessaries of life — the necessary consequence of the plenty of money — and clamour incessantly for the unlimited introduction of cheap distant grain, and the contraction of the currency, in order to obviate these disadvantages. They would willingly have the wealth in their own hands, which is the growth of ages of prosperous opulence, and purchase subsistence and pay labour at the rate of rude and indigent states. They succeed to a great degree in achieving their objects, by contracting the currency, and forcing free trade upon an old state ; but they do so by draining its heart's blood, and prostrating alike its independence and national strength. They lower prices, but it is only by diffusing misery ; they pacify for a short time the inhabitants of towns, but it is only by permanently ruining those of the country. In the struggle to maintain the prices of poverty in the midst of riches, industry is blighted, small capitals are destroyed, the value of money rises, w^hile that of labour falls. The nation comes to consist only of over- grown capitalists and indigent multitudes. The indirect taxes levied on the declining fruits of industry cease to be productive, and Government is driven to the last and dire resource of heavy and increasing direct taxation. Capital, alone left to meet the demands of the state, is, as the just retribution for its rapacity, in the end destroyed. Deprived of all the perennial fountains of prosperity and strength, the nation falls under the suicidal acts of its own rulers. They put it to deatli for fear of its dying. Human ingenuity seeks in vain to escape the operation of the law, which at the appointed season limits the growth and under- mines the power of nations. In seeking to avoid Scylla it falls into Charybdis ; by ruining the prosperity of others, human selfishness destroys its own. The same law which makes an apple fall to the ground, restrains the planets in their coarse, and upholds the magnificent fabric of the heavens. Dr Johnson's observation points to a law 496 THE FALL OF ROME. which limits the lifetime of nations, restrains the march of conquest, and has for ever rendered universal dominion impossible. But although, for this reason, it was inevitable that the weakness arising from the prostration of the strength of its central provinces should in the end have destroyed the power, and terminated, if not overturned by actual violence, the existence of the British empire, yet the means of long combating this mortal malady had been given to it by Provi- dence, if they had not been thrown away by the selfish ambi- tion or the blind infatuation of its later rulers. Its vast and growing colonies in every part of the world afforded it the means of counteracting for centuries the decrepitude of age by the vigour and the elasticity of youth. It was inevitable in the days of its maturity that Great Britain should come to depend for the supply of subsistence and the materials of manufactures, in part at least, on distant states — but those distant states might have been its own transmarine possessions. Then prosperity and riches would have reacted incessantly on that of the parent state. The original stock would have been long vivified and invigorated by the growth of its offshoots. But the selfish and suicidal policy which has alienated or ruined our colonies, for the' sake of a temporary profit to the dominant urban class at home, has thrown away these advantages, and brought the weakness and diffi- culties of age upon the state, which still possesses within itself the means of prolonging a respected and prosperous existence. KAEAMSIN'S RUSSIA [FOREIGN AND COLONIAL REVIEW, July 1844] Never was there a more just observation, than that there is no end to authentic history. We shall take the most learned and enthusiastic student of history in the country — one who has spent half his life in reading the annals of human events — and still we are confident that much of what is about to be stated in this article will be new to him. Yet it relates to no inconsiderable state, and is to be found in no obscure writer. It relates to the history of Russia, the greatest and most powerful empire, if we except Great Britain, which exists upon the earth, and with w^hich — sometimes in alliance, sometimes in jealousy — we have been almost continually in contact during the last half century. It is to be found in the history of Karamsin, the greatest historian of Russia, who has justly acquired a European reputation; but whose great work, though relating to so interesting a subject, has hitherto, in an unaccountable manner, been neglected in this country. We complain that there is nothing new in literature— that old ideas are perpetually recurring, and worn-out topics again dressed up in a new garb — that sameness and imita- tion seem to be irrevocably stamped upon our literature, and the age of original thought, of fresh ideas, and creative genius, has passed away ! Rely upon it, the fault is not in the nature of thinos, but in ourselves. The stock of orimnal ideas, of new thoughts, of fresh images, is not worn out ; on the contrary, it has hardly been seriously worked upon by all the previous efforts of mankind. We may say of it, as Newton did of his discoveries in physical science, that " all that he had done seemed like a boy playing on the sea- VOL. III. 2 I 498 karamsik's Russia. . shore, finding sometimes a brighter pebble or a smoother shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before him." We complain of sameness of thought, of want of originality in topics, and yet we live in the midst of a boundless profusion of new facts and virgin images, for the first time brought forward by our extended intercourse with all parts of the world, and the heart-stirring events of our political history. There never was a period in the annals of mankind, if we except that of tlie discovery of America, in which new facts and novel images, and the materials for original thought, were brought with such pro- fusion to the hand of genius ; and there never was one in which, in this country at least, so little use w^as made of them, or in which the public mind seems to revolve so exclusively round one centre, and in one beaten and well- nigh worn-out orbit. Whence has arisen this strange discrepancy between the profusion with w^hich new materials and fresh objects are brought to hand, and the scanty proportion in wdiich original thought is poured out to the world '? The cause is to be found in the impossibility of getting the great majority of men to make the " past or the future predominant over the present." If we add " the absent'' to the famous apophthegm of Johnson, we shall have a summary of the principal causes which in ordinary times chain mankind to the concentric circles of established ideas. Amidst common events, and under the influence of no peculiar excitement, men are incap- able of extricating themselves from the ocean of habitual thought with which they are surrounded. A few great men may do so, but their ideas produce no impression on the age, and lie wellnigh dormant till they are brought to fructify and spread amidst the turbulence or sufiFerings of another. Thence the use of periods of suffering or intense excitement to the growth of intellect and the development of truth. The past and the future are then made the pre- sent ; ages of experience, volumes of speculation, are then concentrated into the passing results of a few years, and thus spread generally throughout mankind. What original thought was evolved in England during the fervour of the Reformation ! in France during the agonies of the Revolu- tion ! Subsequent epoclis of ease and peace to each were KARAMSIXS RUSSIA. 499 but periods of transfer and amplification — of studied imita- tion and laboured commentary. There has been, there still is, original thought in our age ; but it is confined to those whom the agitation of reform roused from the intellectual lethargy with which they were surrounded, and their opinions have not yet come to influence general thought. They will do so in the next generation, and direct the course of legis- lation in the third. Public opinion, of which so much is said, is nothing but the re-echo of the opinions of the great among our fathers ; so slowly, under the wise system of Providence, is truth and improvement let down to a benighted world ! We have been forcibly led to these observations by the study of Karamsin^s History of Russia, and the immense stores of new facts and novel ideas which are to be found in a work long accessible in its French translation to all, hardly as yet approached by any. We are accustomed to consider Russia as a country which has only been extricated by the genius of Peter the Great, little more than a century and a half ago, from a state of barbarism, and the annals of which have been lost amidst general ignorance, or are worthy of no regard till they were brought into light by increasing intercourse with the powers of western Europe. Such, we are persuaded, is the belief of ninety-nine out of a hun- dred, even among learned readers, in every European state ; yet we perceive from Karamsin, that Russia is a power which has existed, though with great vicissitudes of fortune, for a thousand years ; that Rurick, its founder, was contem- porary with Alfred ; and that it assailed the Bosphorus and Constantinople in the ninth century, with a force greater than that with which William the Conqueror subverted the Saxon monarchy at Hastings, and more powerful than the armies led against it in after times by the ambition of Catherine or the generals of Nicholas ! What is still more remarkable, the mode of attack adopted by these rude invaders of the Byzantine empire was precisely that which long and dear- bought experience, aided by military science, subsequently taught to the Russian generals. Avoiding the waterless and unhealthy plains of Bessarabia and Wallachia, they committed themselves in fearful multitudes to boats, which were wafted down the stream of the Dnieper to the Black 500 KARAMSIN's RUSSIA. Sea ; and when the future conqueror of the East approaches to place the cross on the minarets of St Sophia, he has only to follow the track of the canoes, which a thousand years ago brought the hordes of Rurick to the entrance of the Bosphorus. Complicated, and to appearance inextricable, as the trans- actions of the Slavonic race seem at first sight, the history of Russia is yet singularly susceptible of simplification. It embraces five great periods, each of which have stamped their own peculiar impress upon the character of the people, and which have combined to produce that mighty empire which now numbers sixty millions of men among its subjects, and a seventh of the surface of the globe beneath its domi- nion. The first of these periods is that which commences with the foundation of the Russian empire by Rurick, in 826, and terminates with the commencement of the unhappy division of the empire into appanages or provisions for younger children — the source of innumerable evils both to the monarchy and its subjects — in 1054. The extent to wliich tlie empire had spread, and the power it had acquired, before this ruinous system of division commenced, is extra- ordinary. In the tenth century, Russia was as prominent, comparatively speaking, among the poAvers of Europe, in point of territory, population, resources, and achievements, as she is at this moment. The conquests of Oleg, of Svia- toslof, and of Vladimir, to whom the sceptre of Rurick had descended, extended the frontiers of the Russian territory from Novogorod and KiefF — its original cradle on the banks of the Dnieper — to the Baltic, the Dwina, and the Bug, on the west ; on the south, to the cataracts of the Dnieper and the Cimmerian Bosphorus ; in the north, to Archangel, the Wliite Sea, and Finland ; on the east, to the Ural Moun- tains and shores of the Caspian. All the territory which now constitutes the strength of Russia, and has enabled it to extend its dominion and influence so far over Asia and Europe, was already ranged under the sceptre of its mon- archs before the time of Edward the Confessor. The second period comprehends the innumerable intestine wars, and progressive decline of the strength and considera- tion of the empire, which resulted from the adoption of the KAEAMSIN's RUSSIA. 501 fatal system of appanages. This method of proyiding for the younger children of successive monarchs, so natural to parental affection, so just with reference to the distribution of possessions among successive royal families, so ruinous to the ultimate interests of the state, was commenced by the Grand-prince Dmitri in 1054, and afforded too ready a means of providing for the succeeding generation of princes to be soon abandoned. The effects of such a system may without difficulty be conceived-. It reduced a solid compact monarchy at once to the distracted state of the Saxon hep- tarchy, and soon introduced into its vitals those fierce inter- nal wars which exhaust the strength of a nation, without either augmenting its resources or adding to its reputation. It is justly remarked, accordingly, by Karamsin, that for the next three hundred years after this fatal change in the system of government, Russia incessantly declined ; and after having attained, at a very early period, the highest pitch of power and grandeur, she sank to such a depth of weakness as to be incapable of opposing any effectual resistance to a foreign invader. The third period of Russian history, and not the least in the formation of its national character, commenced with the Tartar invasion, and terminated with the final emancipation of the Muscovite dominions. In 1224, the first intelligence of a strange, uncouth, and savage enemy having appeared on the eastern frontier, was received at Kieff, then the capital of the Muscovite confederacy — for it no longer deserved the name of an empire ; and two hundred and fifty years had elapsed before the nation was finally emancipated from their dreadful yoke. This w^as accomphshed by the abilities and perseverance of John III., the true restorer, and in some degree the second founder of the empire, in 1480, in which year the last invasion of the Tartars was repulsed, and the disgraceful tribute so long paid to the Great Khan was dis- continued. During this melancholy interval, Russia under- went the last atrocities of savage cruelty and barbaric des- potism. Moscow, then become the capital, was sacked and burnt by the Tartars, in 1387, with more devastation than afterwards during the invasion of Napoleon ; every province of the empire was repeatedly overrun by these ruthless 502 KAEAMSIN S EUSSIA. invaders, ^'ho, equally incapable of giving or receiving quar- ter, seemed, wherever they went, to have declared a war of extermination against the human race, which their prodi- gious numbers and infernal energy in w^ar generally enabled them to carry on with success. Nor was their pacific rule, where they had thoroughly subjugated a country, less degrad- ing than their inroad was frightful and devastating. Oppres- sion, long continued and systematic, constituted their only system of government ; and the Russians owe to these terrible tyrants the use of the knout, and of the other cruel punishments which, from their long retention in the empire of the Czars, when generally disused elsewhere, have so long excited the horror of Western Europe. The fourth period commences with the abolition of the ruinous system of appanages by the mingled firmness and cunning, wisdom and fortune, of John III., about the year 1480; and continued till the genius of Peter the Great gave the country its great impetus two hundred years after. This period was a chequered one to the fortunes of Muscovy, but, on the whole, of general progressive advance- ment. Under Vassili, the successor of John III., the Russians made themselves masters of Smolensko, and extended their frontiers on the east to the Dwina. Under John the Terrible, who succeeded him, they carried by assault, after a terrible struggle, Kazan, in the south of MuscoA'y, where the Tartars had established themselves in a solid manner and formed the capital of a powerful state, which had more than once inflicted, in conjunction with the Lithuanians, the most dreadful wounds on the vitals of the empire. Disasters great and repeated still marked this period, as wave after wave break on the shore after the fury of the tempest has been stilled. Moscow was again reduced to ashes during the minority of John the Terrible; it was again burnt by the Tartars; and a third time, by accident ; the victorious Poles advanced their standards to its gates, and so low were his fortunes reduced, that that heroic but bloody monarch had at one period serious thoughts of deserting his country, and seeking refuge in England from his numerous enemies. Yet Russia, thanks to the patriotism of her children and the indomitable firm- KAEAMSIN S EUSSIA. 503 ness of her character, surviyed all these disasters. In the succeeding reign her arms ^yere extended across the Ural mountains over Siberia — though her dominion over its immense wilds was for long little more than nominal — and a fortress was erected at Archangel, which seciu'ed to her the command of the White Sea. The last period commences with the taking of Azoph, hy Peter the Great, in 1696, which first opened to the youth- ful Czar the dominion of the Black Sea, and terminates with the prodigious extension of the empire, consequent on the defeat of Napoleon's invasion. Europe has had too much reason to be acquainted with the details of Russian victories during this period. Her wars were no longer with the Tartars or Lithuanians : she no longer fought for life or death with the Khan of Samarcand, the hordes of Bati, or the Czar of Kazan. Emerging with the strength of a giant from the obscure cloud in which she had hitherto been involved, she took an active, and at length a fearful part in the transactions of Western Europe. The conquest of Azoph, which opened to them the command of the Black Sea — the fierce contest with Sweden, and ultimate over- throw of its heroic monarch at Pultowa — the bloody wars with Turkey, commencing with the disasters of the Pruth, and leading on to the triumphs of Ockzakow, of Ismael, and Adrianople — the conquest of Georgia, and passage of the Russian armies over the chain of the Caucasus and to the waters of the Araxes — the acquisition of Wallachia and Moldavia, and extension of their southern frontier to the Danube — the partition of Poland, and entire subjugation of then' old enemies, the Lithuanians — the seizure of Finland by Alexander — in fine, the overthrow of Napoleon, capture of Paris, and virtual subjugation of Turkey by the treaty of Adrianople, have marked this period in indelible characters on the tablets of the world's history. Above Alexander's tomb are now hung the keys of Paris and Adrianople : those of Warsaw will be suspended over that of his successor ! The ancient and long dreaded rivals of the empire, the Tartars, the Poles, the French, and the Turks, have been successively vanquished. Every war for two centuries past has led to an accession to the Muscovite territory; and no human foresight can predict the period 504 KAKAMSm's ED SSI A. when tlie god Terminus is to recede. There is enough here to arrest the attention of the most inconsiderate ; to occupy the thoughts of the most contemplative. History exhibits numerous instances of empires which have been suddenly elevated to greatness by the genius or fortune of a single man ; but in all such cases the dominion has been as short-lived in its endurance as it was rapid in its growth. The successive empires of Alexander, Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, Nadir Shah, Charlemagne, and Napo- leon, attest this truth. But there is no example of a nation having risen to durable greatness, or attained a lasting dominion over the bodies and minds of men, but by long previous efforts, and the struggles and sufferings of many successive centuries. It would appear to be a general law of nature, alike in the material and the moral world, that nothing permanent is erected but by slow degrees, and that hardship and suffering constitute the severe but necessary school of ultimate greatness. In this point of view, there is a remarkable analogy between the history, from the earliest periods, of England, France, and Russia — the three powers which stood forth so prominent in the great fight of the nineteenth century. Their periods of greatness, of suffering, and of probation, from their infancy have been the same ; and during the long training of a thousand years, each has at the same time, and in a similar manner, been undergoing the moral discipline requisite for ultimate great- ness, and the effects of which now appear in the lasting impression they have made upon the world. We do not recollect to have ever seen reference to this remarkable analogy in the annals of these first-born of European states; but it is so striking, that we must request our reader's attention for a few minutes to its consideration. The Russian empire, as already mentioned, was founded by Rurick, a hero and a wise monarch, about the year 860; and ere long its forces were so powerful that eighty thousand Russians attacked the Bosphorus, and threatened Constantinople in a more serious manner than it has since been, even by the victorious arms of Catherine or Nicholas. Tliis first and great era in Russian story — this sudden burst into existence — was contemporary with that of Alfred in England, who began to reign in 871, and KARAMSIX S RUSSIA. 505 nearly so with ChaiierQagne in France, who died at Aix-La- Chapelle in 814, leaving an empire coextensive with that which, exactly a thousand years afterwards, was lost by Napoleon. The two centuries and a half of weakness, civil dissension, and external decline, which in Russia commenced with the system of dividing the empire into appanages in 1060, were contemporary with a similar period of distraction and debility, both to the English and French monarchies. To the former, by the Norman conquest, which took place in that very year, and was followed by continual oppression of the people, and domestic warfare among the barons, till they were repressed by the firm hand of Edward I., who first rallied the native English population to the support of the crown, and by his vigour and abilities overawed the Norman nobility in the end of the thirteenth century. To the latter, by the miserable weakness which overtook the empire of Charlemagne under the rule of his degenerate successors ; until at length its frontiers were contracted from the Elbe and the Pyrenees to the Aisne and the Loire, — till all the great feudatories in the monarchy had become independent princes, and the decrees of the King of France were not obeyed farther than twenty miles around Paris. The woful period of Muscovite oppression, when ravaged by the successive armies of Genghis Khan, Tamerlane, and Bati, and when the people for two centuries drank the cup of humiliation from Tartar conquests, or purchased a pre- carious respite by the ignominy of Tartar tribute, was con- temporary with the disastrous English wars in France. The battle of Cressy was fought in 1314, that of Azincour in 1415; and it was not till 1448, that these hated invaders were at length finally expelled from the Gallic shores, by the effects of the heroism of the Maid of Orleans, and the jealousies of the English nobility in the time of Henry VI. If these wars were disastrous to France, — if they induced the horrors of famine, pestilence, and Jacquerie, which ere long reduced its inhabitants a half, — not less ruinous were their consequences to England, exhausting, as they did, the strength of the monarchy in unprofitable foreign wars, and leaving the nation a prey, at their termination, to the furious civil contests of York 506 KAEAMSIX'S EUSSIA. and Lancaster, which for above twenty years drenched their fields with blood, almost destroyed the old nobility, and left the weak and disjointed people an easy prey to the tyrannic rule of Henry YIII., who put seyenty-two thousand persons to death by the hand of the executioner in Ids single reign. It is hard to say whether Russia, when emerging from the severities of Tartar bondage — or France, when freed from the scourge of English invasions — or England, when decimated by the frightful carnage of York and Lancaster, was in the more deplorable condition. From this pitiable state of weakness and suffering all the three monarchies were raised about the same period by three monarchs, who succeeded in each, partly by wisdom, partly by good fortune, partly by fraud, in reconstructing the disjointed members of the state, and giving to the central government the vigour and unity which had been lost amidst the distractions and suffering of former times, but which were essential to the tranquillity and wellbeing of society. John III., who achieved this great w^ork in Russia, was the counterpart of Louis XL, who at the same time accomplished it in France. John III. ascended the throne in 1462, and reigned till 1505 : Louis XL in 1461, and reigned till 1483. Both were cautious in design, and persevering in execution ; both were bold in council rather than daring in the field; both prevailed in a barbarous age, rather by their superior cunning and dissimulation than by the wisdom or justice of their measures. Both had implicitly adopted the Machiavelian maxim, that the end will in all cases justify the means, and employed without scruple fraud and perfidy, as well as wisdom and perseverance, to accom- plish their grand object, the restoration of the throne, and abasement of the great feudatories. Both were equally successful. The reunion of the appanages to the crown of the Russian grand-prince, the subjugation of the ancient republic of Novogorod, the annexation of that of Pfosk by his successors, were steps extremely analogous to the defeat of Charles the Bold, and the acquisition of Normandy and Acquitaine by Louis XL, and the happy marriage of Anne of Brittany to his royal successor. Nor was the coincidence of a similar monarch on the throne, and a similar revolu- tion in society in England at the same period, less remark- KARAMSm's RUSSIA. 507 able. Henry VII. won the crown of England on the field of Bosworth in 1485, and reigned till 1509. By uniting the rival pretensions of the Houses of York and Lancaster to the throne, through his marriage with the heiress of the former house, he reconstructed the English monarchy; his avarice left a vast treasure, which rendered the crown inde- pendent, to his vehement successor; his cautious policy broke down the little power which the fierce contests of former times had left to the Norman nobility. John III., Louis XL, and Henry VIL, were the real restorers of the monarchy in their respective kingdoms of Russia, France, and England; and they were men of the same character, and flourished very nearly at the same time. The next epoch in the history of Russia was that of Peter the Great, whose genius overcame the obstacles con- sequent on the remoteness of its situation, and opened to its people the career of European industry, arts, and arms. Russia had now gone through the ordeal of greatness and of suffering ; it had come powerful, energetic, and valiant out of the school of sufi'ering. But the remoteness of its situation, the want of water communication with its principal provinces, the barbarous Turks who held the key to its richest realms in the south, and the Frozen Ocean, which for half the year barricaded its harbours in the north, had hitherto prevented the industry and civilisation of its inha- bitants from keeping pace with their martial prowess and great aspirations. At this period Peter arose, who, uniting the wisdom of a philosopher and the genius of a lawgiver, to the zeal of an enthusiast and the ferocity of a despot, forcibly drove his subjects into the new career, and forced them, in spite of themselves, to engage in the arts and labours of peace. Contemporary with this vast heave of the Muscovite empire, was a similar growth of the power and energy of France and England ; but tlie different cha- racters of the Asiatic and European monarchy, and of the free community, were now conspicuous. The age of Peter the Great in Russia, was that of Louis XIV. in France ; of the Revolution of 1688, and of Marlborough, in England. The same age saw the victories of Pultowa and Blenheim, the overthrow of Charles XII. and the humbling of the Grand Monarque. But great was now the difference in the cha- 508 kakamsin's Russia. racter of the nations by whom these achievements Avere effected. Peter, bj the force of Asiatic power, drove an ignorant and brutish race into industry and art ; Louis led a chivah'ous and gallant nation to the highest pitch of splen- dour and greatness ; William III. ^^'as impelled by the free spirit of an energetic and religious community, into the assertion of Protestant independence, and the maintenance of European freedom. But this great step in all the three nations took place at the same time, and under sovereigns severally adapted to the people they were called to rule, and the part they were destined to play on the theatre of the world. The last great step in the history of Russia has been that of Alexander — an era signalised beyond all others by the splendour and magnitude of military success. It witnessed the conquest of Finland, Georgia, Wallachia, and Moldavia, the acquisition of Poland, and the extension of the empire to the Araxes. Need we say with what events this period was contemporary in France and England *? — that the age which witnessed the burning of Moscow, saw also the taking of Paris — that Pitt and Wellington were contemporary with Alexander and Barclay — that but a year separated Leipsic and Waterloo '? Coming, as it did, at the close of this long period of parallel advance and similar vicissitudes, during a thousand years, there is something inexpressibly impressive in this contemporaneous rise of the three great powers of Europe to the highest pinnacle of worldly grandeur — this simultaneous efflorescence of empires, which during so long a period had advanced parallel to each other in the painful approach to worldly greatness. Nor let the intel- lectual pride of western Europe despise the simple and com- paratively untutored race, which has only within the last century and a half taken a prominent part in the affairs of Europe. The virtues, whether of nations or individuals, are not the least important which are nursed in solitude ; the character not the least commanding which, chastened by suffering, is based on a sense of religious duty. The nation is not to be despised which overthrew Napoleon ; the moral training not to be forgotten which fired the torches of Moscow. European Liberalism and infidelity will acquire a right to ridicule Muscovite ignorance and barbarity when it has produced equal achievements, but not till then. KARAMSIJs^'s RUSSIA. 509 All the recent events in history, as well as the tendency of opinion in all the enlightened men in all countries who have been bred up under their influence, point to the con- clusion that there is an original and indelible diflPerence in the character of the different races of men, and that each will best find its highest point of social advancement by institutions which have grown out of its ruling dispositions. This is but an exemplification of the profound observation long ago made by Montesquieu, that no nation ever rose to durable great- ness but by institutions in harmony with its spirit. Perhaps no national calamities have been so great, because none so lasting and irremediable, as those which have arisen from the attempt to transfer the institutions of one race and stage of political advancement to another family of men and an- other era of social progress. Recollecting what great things the Slavonic race has done both in former and present times, it is curious to see the character which Karamsin gives of them in the first volume of his great work : — "Like all other people, the Slavonians, at the commencementof their political existence, were ignorant of the advantages of a regular government ; they would neither tolerate masters nor slaves among them, holding the first of blessings to consist in the enjoyment of unbounded freedom. The father of a family commanded his children, the husband his wife, the master his household, the brother his sisters ; every one constructed his hut in a place apart from the rest, in order that he might live more at ease, and according to his own inclinations. A wood, a stream, a field, constituted the dominion of a Slavonian ; and no unarmed person ventured to violate the sanctity of his domain — each family formed a little independent republic ; and the ancient customs, common to the whole nation, served them instead of laws. On important occasions the difterent tribes assembled to deliberate on their common concerns ; they consulted the old men, those living repositories of ancient usages, and they evinced the utmost deference to their advice. The same system was adopted when they required to elect a chief for one of their warlike expeditions ; but such was their excessive love of freedom, and repugnance towards any kind of constraint, that they imposed various limi- tations on the authority of their chiefs, whom they often disobeyed, even in the heat of battle. After having terminated their expedition, every one re- turned to his home, and resumed the command of his children and house- hold. "That savage simplicity — that rudeness of manners, could not long endure. The pillage of the empire of the East, the centre of luxury and riches, made the Slavonians acquainted with new pleasures and hitherto unfelt wants. These wants, by putting an end to their solitary independence, drew closer the bonds of social dependence : they daily felt more strongly the necessity of mutual support ; they placed their homes nearer each other ; they began to build towns. Others, who had seen in foreign countries magnificent cities and flourishing villages, lost all taste for the obscurity of the forests, once endeared to their hearts by the love of independence ; they passed into the provinces of Greece; they consented to range themselves under the rule 510 KARAMSIN'S RUSSIA. of the emperor. The fate of war placed, for a brief season, a large part of the German Slavonians under the government of Charlemagne and his suc- cessors ; but an unconquerable love of freedom was ever the basis of their character. On the first favourable opportunity they threw off the yoke, and avenged themselves cruelly on their rulers for their transient subjection : they were never finally reduced to order but by the influence of the Christian religion."— Vol. i. p. 68, 69. How strongly does this picture of the Slavonic race, a thousand years ago, recall the traces of the Poles of the present time ! The same love of solitary and isolated free- dom — the same passion for independence — the same fretting under the restraints of civilisation and the curb of authority — the source at once of their strength and their weakness — their glories and their ruin ! If it be true, as Shakspeare has told us, that the ruling passion is strong in death, no slight interest will attach to Karamsin's graphic picture of the character evinced in the supreme hour by the three races which have so long con- tended for the mastery of the East — viz.. the Tartars, the Russians or Slavonians, and the Turks. " Cannons for a long time were not regarded by the Russians as a neces- sary part of the implements of war. Invented as they conceived by the Italian artists for the defence of fortresses, they allowed them to remain motionless on their carriages on the ramparts of the Kremlin. In the moment of combat, the Russians trusted more to their number than to the skill of their manceuvres ; they endeavoured in general to attack the enemy in rear, and surround him. Like all Asiatic nations, they looked rather to their movements at a distance than in close fight ; but when they did charge, their attacks were impetuous and terrible, but of short duration. ' In their vehement shock,' says Herberstain, ' they seemed to say to their enemy — Fly, or we will fly ourselves !' In war as in pacific life, the people of differ- ent races differ to an astonishing degree from each other. Thrown down from his horse, disarmed, and covered with blood, the Tartar never thinks of surrender : he shakes his arms, repels the enemy with his foot, and with dying fury bites him. No sooner is the Turk sensible he is overthrown, than he throws aside his scimitar, and implores the generosity of his conqueror. Pursue a Russian, he makes no attempt to defend himself in his flight, but neither does he ask for quarter. Is he pierced by lances or swords, he is silent^ and diesy — Vol. vii. p. 252. These are the men of whom Frederick the Great said, you might kill them where they stood, but never make them fly. — " They were motionless, fell, and died !" " Then shrieked the timid, and stood still the brave." A devout sense of religion, a warm and constant sense of Divine superintendence, has in every age, from tlie days of KAEAMSIN S RUSSIA. 511 Rurick to tliose of Alexander, formed the ruling principle and grand characteristic of the Russians, as it has of all nations which have ever risen to durable greatness. Kar- amsin tells us that from the remotest period this has been the unvarying characteristic of the Slavonic race : — " In the sixth century the Slavonians adored the Creator of Tlmnder — the God of the universe. The majestic spectacle of storms — at the moment when an invisible hand appears from the height of the burning heavens to dart its lightnings upon the earth — must ever make a deep impression alike on civilised and savage man. The Slavonians and Antes, as Procopius ob- serves, did not believe in destiny; but, according to them, all events depended on the will of a Ruler of the world. On the field of battle, in the midst of perils, in sickness, in calamity, they sought to find the Supreme Being — by vows, by the sacrifice of bulls and goats, to appease his wrath. On the same principle, they adored the rivers and mountains, which they peopled with nymphs and genii, by whose aid they sought to penetrate the depths of futurity. In later times, the Slavonians had abundance of idols ; persuaded that true wisdom consisted in knowing the name and qualities of each god, in order to be able to propitiate his favour. They were true polytheists, considering their statues not as images of the gods, but as inspired by their spirit, and wielding their power. " Nevertheless, in the midst of these absurd superstitions, the Slavonians had an idea of a supreme and all-powerful Being, to whom the immensity of the heavens, dazzling with thousands of stars, formed a worthy temple ; but who was occupied only with celestial objects, while he had intrusted to subaltern deities, or to his children, the government of the world. They called him ' Bilibos,' or the ' AYhite God ; ' while the spirit of evil was named ' Tehermbog,' or the ' Black God.' They sought to appease the last by sacrifices : he was represented under the image of a lion ; and to his malig- nant influences they ascribed all their misfortunes and miseries of life. The beneficent Deity they considered too elevated to be swayed by prayers or approached by mortals : it was the inferior executors of his will who alone were to be propitiated." — Yol. i. p. 99-102. It has been already mentioned that the Russian empire was founded by Rurick in 862. And it is very remarkable that supreme power was obtained by that great warrior, not by the sword of conquest, but by the voluntary and unani- mous will of the people. " In Russia," says Karamsin, " sovereign power was established with the unanimous consent of the inhabitants ; and the Slavonic tribes concurred in forming an empire which now has for its limits the Danube, America, Swe- den, and China. The origin of the government vras as follows : — The Sla- vonians of Xovogorod, and the central districts around Moscow, sent an embassy to the Varegue-Russians, who were established on the other side of the Baltic, with these words — ' Our country is great and fertile, but under the rule of disorder: come and take it.' Three brothers named Rurick, Sincori, and Trouver, illustrious alike by their birth and their great actions, escorted by a numerous body of Slavonians, accepted the perilous invitation, and fixed their abode, and began to assume the government in Russia, — Rurick at Novogorod ; Sincori at Bich Ozero, near the Fins ; and Trouver at Izborsk. Within less than two years, Sincori and Trouver both died, and Rurick obtained the government of the whole provinces which had invited 512 karamsin's eussia. them over, and which embraced all the central provinces of Russia ; and the feudal system was established over their whole extent." — Vol. i. p. 143, 144. The Dnieper was the great artery of this infant dominion ; at once their watery highroad, and no inconsiderable source of subsistence. It was on its bosom that the innumerable canoes were launched, which, filled with yellow-haired and ferocious warriors, descended to the Sea of Azoph, penetrated into the Black Sea, forced the passage of the Bosphorus, and often besieged Constantinople itself In less than a century after its first origin, the Russian empire was already a preponderating power in the east of Europe. Before the year 950, the conquests of Oleg, Sviatoslof, and Vladimir, the successors of Rurick, had advanced its frontiers on the west to the Baltic, the Dwina, the Bug, and the Carpathian Mountains ; on the south, to the cataracts of the Dnieper and the Cimmerian Bosphorus ; on the east and north, to Finland and the Ural Mountains ; and on the south-east nearly to the Caspian Sea ; corresponding nearly to the boundaries of Russia in Europe at this time. The words of the Novogorodians, their alHes, which the old annalist of Russia, Nestor, has transmitted, expressed the principle of the government of this vast empire, at this early period : " We wish a prince who will command and govern us accord- ing to the laws ;'' that is to say, as a limited monarchy. Kiefl* was for centuries the capital of this rising dominion, its situation on the bank of the Dnieper being singularly favourable for the development of the resources of the empire. Of its strength and formidable character from the earliest times, decisive evidence is afibrded by the three great expeditions which they fitted out against Constan- tinople, and which are recorded alike by the Greek and early religious annalists. Of the first of these, in 905, Karamsin has given us the following animated account : — " In 905, Oleg, in order to find emploj'ment for his restless and rapacious subjects, declared war against the empire. No sooner was this determina- tion known, than all the warlike tribes from the shores of Finland to those of the Vistula, crowded to the Dniester, and were ranged under the standard of Oleg. Speedily the Dniester was covered by 2000 light barks, each of which carried forty combatants. Thus 80,000 armed men descended the river, flushed with victory, and eager for the spoils of the imperial city. The cavalry marched along the banks ; and soon the mighty host approached the cataracts of the Dnieper, which were of a much more formidable cha- KAEAMSm S RUSSIA. 513 racter than they are now, when so many subsequent centuries, and no small efforts of human industry, have been at work in clearing away the obstacles of the navigation. The Varagues of Kieff had first ventured with two hun- dred barks to enter into the perilous rapids, and through pointed rocks and amidst foaming whirlpools had safely reached the bottom. On this occasion Oleg passed with a fleet and army ten times as numerous. The Russians threw themselves into the water, and conducted the barks, by the strength of the swimmers, down the rapids. In many places they were obliged to clam- ber up on the banks, and, seeking a precarious footing on the sharp ridges of rocks and precipices, often bore the barks aloft on their shoulders. After incredible efforts they reached the mouth of the river, where they repaired their masts, sails, and rudders ; and boldly putting to sea, which most of them had never seen before, spread forth on the unknown waters of the Euxine. The cavalry marched by land, and though grievously weakened in number by the extraordinary length of the land jom-ney, joined their fleet at the mouth of the Bosphorus ; and the united force, 60,000 strong, approached Constantinople. " Leon, surnamed the philosopher, reigned there ; and incapable of any warlike effort, he contented himself with closing the mouth of the Golden Horn, or harbour of Constantinople ; and secure behind its formidable ram- parts, beheld with indifference the villages around in flames, their churches pillaged and destroyed, and the wretched inhabitants driven by the swords and lances of the Russians into the capital. Xestor, the Russian annalist, has left the most frightful account of the cruel barbarities committed on these defenceless inhabitants by the victorious warriors, who put their pri- soners to death by the cruellest tortures, and hurled the living promiscuously with the dead into the sea. Meanwhile the Greeks, albeit numerous and admirably armed, remained shut up in Constantinople ; but soon the Rus- sian standards approached the walls, and they began to tremble behind their impregnable ramparts. Oleg drew up his boats on the shore, and put- ting them, as at the cataracts of the Dnieper, on the shoulders of his men, reached the harbour on the land side ; and after launching them on its upper extremity, appeared with spreading sails, as Mahomet II. afterwards did, ready to land his troops behind the chain, and escalade the walls, on the side where they were weakest. Terrified at this audacious enterprise, the Emperor Leon hastened to sue for peace, offering to send provisions and equipments for the fleet, and to pay an annual tribute ; and a treaty was at length concluded, on the condition that each Russian in the armament should receive twelve grionas, and heavy contributions should be levied on the empire for the towns of Kieff, Tchernigof, Polteck, Lubetch, and other dependencies of Russia." — Vol. i. p. 1G2-165. When the imperial citj, in the commencement of the tenth centmy, was assailed bj such formidable bodies of these northern invaders, and its emperors were so little in a condition to resist the attack, it is not surprising that it should have been prophesied in that city nine hundred years ago, that in its last days Constantinople should be taken by the Russians. The surprising thing rather is, that in con- sequence of the lateral irruption of the Turks, and the sub- sequent jealousies of other European powers, this consum- mation should have been so long delayed as it actually has. YOL. III. 2 K 514 KARAMSIN'S EUSSIA. Passing bj the two centuries and a half of weakness, civil warfare, and decline which followed the disastrous system of appanages, which are uninteresting in general his- tory, we hasten to lay before our readers a specimen of the description Karamsin has given of the terrible effects pro- duced by the Tartar invasions, which commenced in 1223. The devastation of that flourishing part of Asia which for- merly bore the name of Bactriana and Sogdiana, is thus described : — " Bokhara in vaiu attempted a defence against Genghis Khan. The elders of the town came out to leave the keys of the city at the feet of the conqueror ; but to no purpose. Genghis Khan appeared on horseback, and entered the principal mosque ; no sooner did he see the Alcoran there, than he seized it, and threw it with fury to the ground. That capital was reduced to ashes. Samarcand, fortified with care, contained 100,000 soldiers, and a great number of elephants, which constituted at that period the principal strength of the Asiatic armies. Distrusting even these power- ful means of defence, the inhabitants threw themselves on the mercy of the conqueror, but met with a fate as cruel as if they had stood an assault. Thirty thousand were put to death in cold blood, a like number condemned to perpetual slavery, and a contribution of 200,000 pieces of gold levied on the town. Khiva, Tirmel, and Balkh, in the last of which were 1200 mosques, and 200 baths for strangers alone, experienced the same fate. During two or three years the ferocious wars of Geughis Khan ravaged to such a degree the wide countries stretching from the Sea of Aral to the Indus, that during the six centuries which have since elapsed, they have never recovered their former flourishing condition." — Vol. iii. p. 281, 282. At length this terrible tempest approached the Muscovite plains. The first great battle between the Moguls and the Russians took place in 1226. " Encouraged by a trifling success they had gained over the advanced- guard of the enemy, the Russians drew up their army on the left bank of the Kalka, and calmly awaited the approach of the enemy. Soon the innumerable squadrons of the Tartars appeared, and the intrepid Daniel, overflowing with courage, bore down upon the vanguard, broke it, and had weUnigh gained a glorious victory ; but the cowardly Polontsks could not stand the shock of the Moguls, and speedily turned their backs and fled. In the delirium of terror, they precipitated themselves on the Russians, pene- trated their ranks, and carried the most frightful disorder into their camp, where the princes of Kieff and Tchernigof had made no preparations for battle, as Moteslaf, their general, who commanded the leading column, wishing to engross the whole honours of victory, had given them no warning of the approaching fight. Once broken, the Russians made but a feeble resistance : even the young Daniel was swept away by the torrent ; and it was not till his horse stopped on the brink of a stream which it could not pass, that he felt a deep wound which he had received in the commencement of the action. The Tartars, in continuing the pursuit to the banks of the Dnieper, made a prodigious slaughter of the flying Muscovites ; among others, six princes and seventy nobles were put to death. Never did Russia experience a more stunning calamity. A superb army, numerous, valiant. KAEAMSIN's RUSSIA. 515 animated with the highest spirit, almost entirely disappeared ; hardly a tenth part of its numbers escaped. The base Polontsks, our pretended allies, joined in the massacre of the Russians, when victory had decidedly declared in favour of the Moguls. In the consternation which followed, the few Russian generals who survived threw themselves into the Dnieper, and destroyed all the boats on the river, to prevent the enemy from pursuing them. All but Moteslaf Romanevich, of KiefF, passed over: but that chief, who was left in a fortified camp on the summit of a hill, disdained to abandon his post, and actually awaited the whole fury of the Mogul onset. During three days, at the head of his heroic band, he repulsed all their efl:brts ; and at length, wearied with a resistance which they saw no means of surmounting, the Mogul leaders proposed to allow him to retire with his troops, provided a ransom was given, which capitulation was agreed and sworn to on both sides. No sooner, however, had the perfidious Tartars by this device wiled the Russians out of their stronghold, than they fell upon them and massacred the whole, and concluded their triumph by making a horrid feast of their bloody remains." — Vol. iii. p. 289-291. The immediate subjugation of Russia seemed presaged bj this dreadful defeat ; but the danger at the moment was averted bj orders from Genghis KJian, who withdrew his forces to the south for an expedition against Persia. But the breathing-time was not of long duration. Before many years had elapsed, the Tartars returned flushed with fresh conquest under the redoubtable Bati. That terrible con- queror, the scourge of Russia, took and burnt Moscow, where the prince, who commanded, and the whole of the inhabitants, were put to the sword, without distinction of age or sex. City after city, province after province, fell before the dreadful invaders, who seemed as irresistible as they were savage and pitiless. Broken down into numerous little appanages, or separate principalities, the once powerful Russian empire was incapable of making any effectual resistance. Yet were examples not wanting of the most heroic and touching devotion, worthy to be placed beside the names of Astapa and Numantium. " Bati sent a part of his troops against Souzdel, which made no resistance. As soon as they had entered it, the Tartars, according to their usual cus- tom, put to death the whole population, vvith the exception of the young monks at Nuni, who were reserved for slavery. On the 6th of February 1238, the inhabitants of Vladimir beheld the dark squadrons of the Tartars, like a black torrent, surround their walls ; and soon the preparation of scal- ing-ladders and palisades indicated an immediate assault. Unable to resist this innumerable army, and yet sensible that it was in vain, as the Moguls would massacre, or sell them all for slaves, the boyards and nobles, inspired with a sublime spirit, resolved to die as became them. The most heartrend- ing spectacle followed. Ysevold, his wife and children, and a great number of illustrious nobles, assembled in the church of Xotre Dame, where they supplicated the Bishop Metrophene to give them the ' tonsure monacale,' 516 karamsin's eussia. which severed them from the world. That solemnity took place in profound silence. Those heroic citizens had bid adieu to the world and to life ; but at the moment of quitting it they did not pray the less fervently for the existence of their beloved Russia. On the 7th of February, being the Sun- day of the Carnival, the assault commenced, — the Tartars broke into the city by the Golden Gate, by that of Brass and that of St Irene. Vsevold and Moteslaf retired with their guards into the old town, while Agatha, the wife of Georges, the general-in-chief, his daughters, nieces, grand-daughters, and a crowd of citizens of the highest rank, flocked to the cathedral, where they were soon surrounded by the ferocious Moguls, who set fire to the building. No sooner did he perceive the flames, than the bishop exclaimed, ' O Lord ! stretch out thy invisible arms, and receive thy servants in peace,' and gave his benediction to all around him. In fervent devotion they fell on their faces, awaiting death, which speedily overtook them. Some were suffocated by the volumes of smoke which rushed in on all sides, others perished in the flames or sank beneath the swords of the Tartars. The bloodthirstiness of the Moguls could not await the advance of the con- flagration ; with hatchets they burst open the gates and rushed in, eager for the treasures which they thought were hid in the interior. The cruel war- riors of Bati made scarce any prisoners : all perished by the sword or the flames. The Prince Vsevold and Moteslaf, finding themselves unable to repel the enemy, strove to cut their way through their dense battalions, and both perished in the attempt." — Yol. iii. p. 344, 345. Another instance of sublime devotion will close our extracts from the scenes of carnage : — " After the destruction of Yladimir, the numerous Tartar bands advanced towards Kozilsk, in the government of Kalouga. Vassili commanded in that town, and with his guards and his people deliberated on the part which they should adopt. ' Our prince is still young,' exclaimed those faithful Russians : ' It is our duty to die for him, in order to leave a glorious name, and to find beyond the tomb the crown of immortality.' All united in this generous determination, resolving at the same time to retard the enemy as much as possible by the most heroic resistance. During more than a month the Tartars besieged the fortress without being able to make any sensible progress in its reduction. At length a part of the walls having fallen down under their strokes, the Tartars escaladed the ramparts ; but at their summit they were met by a determined band of Russians, who with knives and swords disputed every inch of ground, and slew 4000 Tartars before they sank under the innumerable multitude of their enemies. Not one of that heroic band survived ; the whole inhabitants, men, women, and children, were put to death ; and Bati, astonished at so vehement a resistance, called the town ' the wicked city' — a glorious appellation when coming from a Tartar chief. Yassili perished, literally drowned in the blood of his fol- lowers." — Yol. iii. p. 549, 550. And it is at the time 'when these heroic deeds are for the first time brought under the notice of the people of this country, that we are told that. everything is worn out, and that nothing new or interesting is to be found in human affairs ! But all these efforts, how heroic soever, could not avert the stroke of fate. Russia was subdued, less by the superior skill or valour, than by the enormous numbers of the enemy, KARAMSIX'S RUSSIA. 517 ^\'lio at lengtli poured into the country four hundred thousand strong. For above two hundred and fifty years they were tributary to the Tartars, and the grand princes of Russia were confirmed in their government by the Great Khan. The first great effort to shake off that odious yoke was made in 1378, when Dmitri collected the still scattered forces of the appanages to make head against the common enemy. The two armies, each one hundred and fifty thousand strong, met at Koulikoff on the 7th September 1378, on which day, four hundred and thirty-four years afterwards. Napoleon and Kutusofi* commenced the dreadful struggle at Borodino. " On the 6th September, the army approached the Don, and the princes and bovards deliberated whether they should retire across the river, so as to place it between them and the enemy, or await them where they stood, in order to cut off all retreat from the cowardly, and compel them to con- quer or die. Dmitri then ascended a mound, from which he could surv^ey his vast army. ' The hour of God,' said he, ' has sounded.' In truth, no one could contemplate that prodigious multitude of men and horses ; those innumerable battalions ranged in the finest order ; the thousands of banners, and tens of thousands of arms glittering in the sun, and hear the cry repeated by a hundred and fifty thousand voices, — ' Great God, give us the victory over our enemies ! ' without having some confidence in the result. Such was the emotion of the prince, that his eyes filled with tears ; and, dis- mounting, he knelt down, and stretching out his arm to the black standard, on which was represented our Saviour's figure, he prayed fervently for the salvation of Russia. Then, mounting his horse, he said to those around, — ' My well-beloved brothers and companions in arms, it is by your exploits this day that you will live in the memory of man, or obtain the crown of immortality.' " Soon the Tartar squadrons were seen slowly advancing, and ere long they covered the whole country to the eastward, as far as the eye could reach. Great as was the host of the Russians, they were outnumbered con- siderably by the Moguls. His generals besought Dmitri to retire, alleging the duty of a commander-in-chief to direct the movements, not hazard his person like a private soldier ; but he replied, — ' Xo, you will sufi'er where- ever you are ; if I live, follow me ; if I die, avenge me.' Shortly after, the battle commenced, and w^as the most desperate ever fought between the Russians and the Tartars. Over an extent of ten Aversts, (seven miles,) the earth was stained with the blood of the Christians and Infidels. In some quarters the Russians broke the Moguls ; in others, they yielded to their redoubtable antagonists. In the centre, some young battalions gave way, and spread the cry that all was lost : the enemy rushed in at the opening thus aff'orded, and forced their way nearly to the standard of the Grand Prince, which was only preserved by the devoted heroism of his guard. Meanwhile Prince Vladimir Andreiwitch, who was placed with a chosen body of troops in ambuscade, was furious at being the passive spectator of so desperate a conflict, in which he was not permitted to bear a part. At length, at eight at night, the Prince of Yolhynia, who observed with an experienced eye the movements of the two armies, exclaimed, — '■ My fi'iends, our time has come!' and let the whole loose upon the enemy, now some- what disordered by success. Instantly they emerged from the forest which 518 KARAMSIN's RUSSIA. had concealed them from the enemy, and fell with the utmost fury on the Moguls. The effect of this unforeseen attack was decisive. Astonished at the vehement onset, by troops fresh and in the best order, the Tartars fled, and their chief, Mamia, who from an elevated spot beheld the rout of his host, exclaimed, ' The God of the Christian is powerful !' and joined in the general flight. The Russians pursued the Moguls to the Metcha, in endea- vouring to cross which vast numbers were slain or drowned, and the camp, with an immense booty, fell into the hands of the victors." — Vol. v. p. 79-82. This great victory, however, did not decide the contest ; and nearly a hundred years elapsed before the independence of Russia from the Tartars was finally established. Not long after this triumph, as after Borodino, Moscow was taken and burnt by the Moguls ; the account of which must, for the present, close our extracts. "No sooner were the walls of Moscow escaladed by the Tartars, than the whole inhabitants, men, women, and children, became the prey of the cruel conquerors. Knowing that great numbers had taken refuge in the stone churches, which would not burn, they cut down the gates Avith hatchets, and found immense treasures, brought into these asylums from the adjoining country. Satiated with carnage and spoil, the Tartars next set fire to the town, and drove a weeping crowd of captives, whom they had selected for slaves from the massacre, into the fields around. ' What terms,' say the contemporary annalists, ' can paint the deplorable state in which Moscow was then left? That populous capital, resplendent with riches and glory, was destroyed in a single day !' Nothing remained but a mass of ruins and ashes ; the earth covered with burning remains, and drenched with blood, corpses half burnt, and churches wrapt in flames. The awful silence was interrupted only by the groans of the unhappy wretches, who, crushed beneath the falling houses, called aloud for some one to put a period to their sufferings." — Vol. v. p. 101. Such was Russia at its lowest point of depression in 1378. The steps by which it regained its independence, and became again great and powerful, would furnish abundant subject for another article on Karamsin's Modern History. We know not what impression these extracts may have made on our readers, but on ourselves they have produced one of the most profound description. Nothing can be so interesting as to trace the infancy and progressive growth of a great nation as of a great individual. In both we can discover the slow and gradual training of the mind to its ultimate destiny, and the salutary influence of adversity upon both, in strengthening the character and calling forth the energies. It is by the slowest possible degrees that nations are trained to the heroic character, the patriotic spirit, the sustained effort, which is necessary to durable elevation. Extraordinary but fleeting enthusiasm, the KARAMSm's RUSSIA. 519 genius of a single man, the conquests of a single nation, may often elevate a power like that of Alexander in ancient, or Napoleon in modern times, to the very highest pitch of worldly greatness. But no reliance can be placed on the stability of such empires ; they invariably sink as fast as they have risen, and leave behind them nothing but a bril- liant, and, generally, awful impression on the minds of succeeding ages. If we would seek for the only sure foun- dations of lasting greatness, we shall find them in the per- severing energy of national character ; in the industry with which wealth has been accumulated, and the fortitude with which suffering has been endured through a long course of ages ; and, above all, in the steady and continued influence of strong religious impressions, which, by influencing men in every important crisis by a sense of duty, has rendered them superior to all the storms of fortune. And the influence of these principles is nowhere more clearly to be traced than in the steady progress and present exalted position of the Russian empire. Of Karamsin's merits as an author, a conception may be formed from the extracts we have already given. We must not expect in the historian of a despotic empire, even when recording the most distant events, the just discrimination, the enlightened views, the fearless opinions, which arise or can be hazarded only in a free country. The philosophy of history is the slow growth of the opinions of all different classes of men, each directed by their ablest leaders, acting and reacting upon each other through a long course of ages. It was almost wholly unknown to the ancient Greeks : it Avas first struck out at a period when the recollections of past freedom contrasted with the realities of present servi- tude, by the mighty genius of Tacitus ; and the sagacity of MachiaveUi, the depth of Bacon, the philosophy of Hume, the glance of Robertson, and the wisdom of Guizot, have been necessary to bring the science even to the degree of maturity which it has as yet attained. But in brilliancy of description, animation of style, and fervour of eloquence, Karamsin is not exceeded by any historian in modern times. The pictures he has given of the successive changes in Russian manners, institutions, and government, though hardly so frequent as could have been wished, prove that he 520 KAEAMSIN's RUSSIA. has in him the spirit of philosophy ; ^Yhile in the animation of his descriptions of every important event, is to be seen the clearest indication that he is gifted with the eye of poetic genius. Russia may well be proud of such, a work ; and it is disgraceful to the literature of this country that no English translation of it has yet appeared. We must, in conclusion, add, that the elevated sentiments with whicli it abounds, as well as the spirit of manly piety and fervent patriotism in which it is conceived, diminish our surprise at the continued progress of an empire which was capable of producing such a writer. THE HISTOKICAL ROMANCE [BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE, Sept. 1845] We are constantly told tliat invention is ^vorn out ; that everything is exhausted ; that all the intellectual treasures of modern Europe have been dug up ; and that we must look to a new era of the world, and a different quarter of the globe, for new ideas or fresh views of thought. It must be confessed, that if we look to some parts of our literature, there seems too good reason for supposing that this despond- ing opinion is well founded. Everything, in some depart- ments, does seem worked out. Poetry appears for the time wellnigh extinguished. We have some charming ballads from Tennyson, some touching lines from Miss Barrett ; but where are the successors of Scott and Byron, of Campbell and Southey '? Romance, in some branches, has evidently exhausted itself. For ten years we had novels of fashionable life, till the manners and sayings of lordlings and right honourables had become familiar to all the haber- dashers' apprentices and milliners' girls in London. That vein being worked out, literature has run into the opposite channel. Action and reaction is the law, not less of the intellectual than the physical world. Inventive genius has sought out, in the lower walks of life, those subjects of novel study and fresh description which could no longer be found in the higher. So far has this propensity gone, so violent has been the oscillation of the pendulum in this direction, that novelists have descended to the very lowest stages of society in search of the new or the exciting. Not only have the manners, the selfishness, and vulgarity of the middle ranks been painted with admirable fidelity, and drawn with inimitable skill, but the habits and slang of the very lowest 522 THE HISTOEICAL EOMAl^CE. portrayed with prurient minuteness, and interest sought to be awakened in tlie Yotaries of fashion or the Sybarites of pleasure by the delineation of the language and ideas of the most infamous wretches who ever disgraced society by their vices, or endangered it by their crimes. " Whatever," says Dr Johnson, " makes the Past, the Distant, or the Future predominate over the present, exalts us in the scale of thinking beings." The words are familiar till they have become trite ; but words are often repeated when the sense is far off. It is in the general oblivion of the thought of the philosopher, while his words were in every mouth, that the cause of the want of origi- nality in modern works of imagination is to be found. The tendency to localise is the propensity which degrades litera- ture, as it is the chief bane and destroyer of individual character. It is the opposite effect of engendering a dispo- sition to expand, which constitutes the chief value of travel- ling in the formation of character. If the thought and conversation of individuals are limited to the little circle in which they live, or the objects by which they are immediately surrounded, we all know what they speedily become. It is in the extension of the interest to a wider circle, in the admission of objects of general concern and lasting impor- tance into the sphere of habitual thought, that the only preservative against this fatal tendency is to be found. It is the power of doing this which forms the chief charm of the highest society in every country, and renders it in truth everywhere the same. A man of the world will find himself equally at home, and conversation flow at once with equal ease, in the higher saloons of London or Paris, of Rome or Vienna, of Warsaw or St Petersburg. But he w^ill find it scarcely possible to keep up conversation for a quarter of an hour in the bourgeois circle of any of these capitals. It is the same with literature, and especially that wide and important branch of literature which, aiming at the exciting of interest or delineating of manners, should in an especial manner be guarded against the degradation consequent on a narrow restriction of its subjects to matters only of local concern. The prodigious success and widespread popularity which liave attended some of the most able novels of this new THE HISTORICAL KOMAXCE. 523 school of romance in late years, as well as the great ability ^vhich their composition evinces, must not blind our eyes to the degrading tendency of such compositions upon the national literature. Immediate circulation, great profit to the bookseller, a dazzling reputation to the author, are by no means to be relied on as the heralds of lasting fame. In cases innumerable, they have proved the reverse. Still less are they to be considered as proofs that the writer, be his abilities what they may, has worthily performed his mission, or elevated himself to the exalted level of which his art is susceptible. The most pernicious romances and poems that ever appeared have often been ushered into the world by the most unbounded immediate applause : witness the Nouvelle Heloise of Rousseau, and Piicelle of Voltaire. It was just their dangerous and seductive qualities which gave them their success. Rousseau knew this well. He addressed himself with skill and perfect knowledge of the age to its passions and vices : — " J'ai vu les moeurs de mon temps, et j'ai publie ces lettres," were the first words of his Nouvelle Heloise. In the school we have mentioned, there is nothing immoral or improper ; but is there anything elevating or improving ? The true test of real excellence is not immediate success but durable fame ; it is to be found not in the popularity of circulating shops or reading clubs, but in the shelves of the library or the delight of the fireside. When a work sud- denly attains great immediate celebrity in a particular circle or country, it is generally, though not always, an indication that it is not destined to enjoy any lasting reputation. The reason is, that it is addressed to local feelings, temporary passions, and particular desires ; and it rises to eminence from interesting or gratifying them. But that is not the way permanently to attract mankind. Nothing can do so but what is addressed to the universal feelings of our nature, and has penetrated to the inmost chords, which are common to all ages and countries. The touching them alone can secure durable fame. Where now are all the novels portraying fashionable life with which the shops of publishers teemed, and the shelves of circulating libraries groaned, not ten years ago ? Buried in the vault of all the Capulets. Where will the novels portraying manners in the lowest walks of life be ten years 524 THE HISTORICAL EOMAXCE. hence ? He is a bold man who says tliej will be found in one well-selected libraiy. We do not dispute the ability of some of these productions. We are well aware of the fidelity with which they have painted the manners of the middle class, previously little touched on in novels ; we fully admit the pathos and power of occasional passages, the wit and humour of many others, the graphic delineation of English character which they contain. But, admitting all this, the question is — have these productions come up to the true standard of novel-writing '? Are they fitted to elevate and purify the minds of their readers *? Will the persons who peruse, and are amused, perhaps fascinated, by them, become more noble, more exalted, more spiritual beings, than they were before ? Do not these novels, able and amusing as they are, bear the same relation to the lofty romances of which our literature can boast, that the Boors of Ostade, or the Village Wakes of Teniers, do to the Madonnas of Guido, or the Holy Families of Raphael \ These pictures were and are exceedingly popular in Flanders and Holland, where their graphic truth could be appreciated ; but are they ever regarded as models of the really beautiful in painting % The doctrine now so prevalent is essentially erroneous — that the manners of the middle or lowest class are the fit object of the novehst, because they are natural. Many things are natural which yet are not fit to be exposed, and by the customs of all civilised nations are studiously con- cealed from the view. Voltaire's well-known answer to a similar remark when made in regard to Shakspeare, indicates, though in a coarse w^ay, the true reply to such observations. If everything that is natural, and we see around us, is the fit object of imitation, and worthy of being perpetuated in literature, it can no longer be called one of the Fine Arts. It is degraded to a mere copying of nature in her coarsest and most disgusting, equally as her noblest and most elevating aspects. We protest against the doctrine, that the lofty art of romance is to be lowered to the delineatinor the manners of cheesemongers and grocers, of crop-head charity boys, or smart haberdashers' and milliners' apprentices of doubtful reputation. If we wish to see the manners of such classes, THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE. 525 we have only to get into a railway or steamboat ; the sight of them at breakfast or dinner will probably be enough for any person accustomed to the habits of good society. Still more solemnly do we enter our protest against the slang of thieves or prostitutes, the flash words of receivers of stolen goods and criminal officers, the haunts of murderers and burglars, being the proper subject for the amusement or edification of the other classes of society. It might as well be said that the refuse of the common-sewers should be raked up and mixed with the garbage of the streets to form our daily food. That such things exist is certain ; we have only to walk the streets at night, and we shall soon have ample evidence of their reality. But are they the proper object of the novel-writer's pencil ? That is the question ; and it is painful to think that in an age boasting its intelli- gence, and glorying in the extent of its information, such a question should be deemed susceptible of answer in any but one way. These two extremes of novel- writing — the Almacks and Jack Sheppard schools — deviate equally from the standard of real excellence. The one is too exclusively devoted to the description of high, the other of low life. The one portrays a style of manners as artificial and peculiar as that of the paladins and troubadours of chivalry ; the other exhibits to our view the lowest and most degraded stages of society, and by the force of humour or the tenderness of pathos interests us too often in the haunts of vice or the pursuits of infamy. It is easy to see that the one school was produced by the reaction of the human mind against the other ; genius, tired of the eternal flirtations of guards- men and right honourables, sought for unsophisticated nature in the humour of low or the sorrows of humble life. But low and humble life are sophisticated just as much as elevated and fashionable ; and, if we are driven to a selection, we would prefer the artificial manners of the great to the natural effiisions of the vulgar. We would rather, as the child said to the ogress, be eaten up by the gentleman. But true novel-writing should be devoted to neither the one nor the other. It should aim at the representation of what Sir Joshua Reynolds called " general or common nature " — that is, nature by its general features, which are common to 526 THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE. all ages and countries, not by its peculiarities in a particular circle or society. It is by success in delineating that, and by it alone, that lasting fame is to be acquired. Without doubt every age and race of men have their separate dress and costume, and the mind has its externals as well as the body, which the artist of genius will study with sedulous care, and imitate with scrupulous fidelity. But the soul is not in the dress ; and so it will be found in the delineation of mind as in the representation of the figure. All these extravagances in the noble art of romance originate in one cause. They come of not making " the past and the distant predominate over the present." It is like sketching every day from nature in the same scenery or country ; the artist, if he has the pencil of Claude Lorraine or Salvator Rosa, will in the end find that if the objects of his study are endless, their character has a certain family resemblance ; and that, if he is not repeating the same study, he is reproducing, under different forms, the same ideas. But let him extend his observation to a wider sphere ; let him study the sublimity of mountain or the sweetness of pastoral scenery ; let him traverse the Alps and the Apennines, the Pyrenees or the Caucasus ; let him inhale the spirit of antiquity amidst the ruins of the Capitol, or the genius of Greece on the rock of the Acropolis ; let liim become imbued with modern beauty on the shores of Naples, or the combined charms of Europe and Asia amidst the intricacies of the Bosphorus — and what a world of true images, objects, and beauties, is at once let into his mind ! It is the same with romance. It is by generalising ideas, by means of extended observation, that variety is to be communicated to conception, and freshness to incident ; that the particular is to be taken from character, and the general impressed upon mind. But the novelist has this immense advantage over the painter — not only the present but the past lie open to his study. The boundless events of history present themselves to his choice ; he can not only roam at will over the present surface of the globe, with all its variety of character, event, and incident, but penetrate backwards into the unsearchable depths of time. When will fresh subjects for description be wanting with such a field to the hand of genius '\ Never to the end of the THE HISTORICAL ROMANCE. 527 Avorld ; for years as they revolve, nations as they rise and fall, events as they thicken around mankind, but add to the riches of the vast storehouse from which it is to select its subjects, or cull its materials. Look at Shakspeare — with what felicity has he selected from this inexhaustible reserve, to vary his incidents, to invigorate his ideas, to give raciness to his characters ! He has not even confined himself to English story, rich as it is in moving or terrible events, and strikingly as its moving phantasmagoria come forth from his magic hand. The tragedies, the comedies, the events, the ideas, of the most distant ages of the world, of the most opposite states of society, of the most discordant characters of mankind, seem depicted with equal felicity. He is neither thoroughly chivalrous like Tasso and Ariosto, nor thoroughly Grecian like Sophocles and Euripides, nor thoroughly French like Corneille and Racine. He has neither portrayed exclusively the manners of Arthur and the Round Table, nor those of the courts of the Henrys or the Plantagenets. He is as varied as the boundless variety of nature. Profoundly imbued at one time with the lofty spirit of Roman patriotism, he is not less deeply penetrated at another with the tenderness of Itahan love. If Juhus Csesar contains the finest picture tliat ever was draw^n of the ideas of the citizens of the ancient world, Juliet is the most perfect delineation of the refined passions of the modern. The bursting heart, uncon- trollable grief, but yet generous spirit of the Moor — the dark ambition and blood-stained career of the Scot, come as fresh from his pencil as the dreamy contemplation of the Prince of Denmark, or the fascinating creation of the forest of Ardennes. It is hard to say whether he is greatest in painting the racked grief of Lear, the homely sense of Falstaif, or the aerial vision of Miranda. Here is the historical drama — here is the varied picture of the human heart ; and if the world is not prolific of Shakspeares, he at least has afforded decisive evidence of the vastness of the field thus opened to its genius. The Historical Romance should take its place beside the plays of Shakspeare. It does not aim at representation on the stage ; it has not the powers of the actor, the illusion of scenery, the magic of theatrical efi