been dispelled, my opinion is, that it is not for the honour of the army that the chief command should remain in the hands of the Duke of York.'

Lord Henry Petty, the present Marquis of Lansdowne, is reported to have said, on the same occasion:

Looking at the whole of the proceedings, and considering the evidence which had been laid before the House, he could lay his hand on his heart and say, that he could not find in that evidence anything to warrant him in saying that the Duke of York had not connived at the abuses into which the House had been inquiring.'

On the 6th of March, Sir Arthur Wellesley wrote to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:

'The Duke of York is certainly in a bad way.

All that we can

do will be to acquit him of corruption, and, indeed, I doubt whether we shall be able to carry him so far, as to acquit him of suspecting Mrs. Clarke's practices, and allowing them to go on. If we should succeed in both these objects, the question will turn upon the point whether it is proper that a prince of the blood, who has manifested such weakness as he has, and has led such a life (for that is material in these days) is a proper person to be entrusted with the execution of the duties of a responsible office. We shall be beat upon this question, I think. If we should carry it by a small majority, the Duke will equally be obliged to resign his office; and most probably the consequence of such a victory so hardly earned will be, that the Government will be broken up.'

Again on the 12th of March:

'We have had three days' debates upon the Duke of York's concerns. Perceval made the best speech I ever heard in Parliament; but the impression is very strong against the Duke, not on the score of corruption, or on the knowledge or even suspicion or connivance of corruption, but on the score of imprudence and submission to the influence of Mrs. Clarke. In my opinion the only chance there is that Government will be affected by the fall of the Duke is in the case of his being kept in his office by a small majority; in that case the contest for his removal will be continued, the counties and populous cities will take part in it, and the Government will fall in his ruin.' (P. 641.)

As we have already stated, the Duke of York relieved the Government which had defended him so unscrupulously, and saved himself from further disgrace by sending in his resignation, which the King was compelled to accept. A successoror rather a warming-pan- was found for him in the person of Sir David Dundas, an unlucky veteran who had long been his devoted follower, and who, Sir Arthur Wellesley tells us, was entrusted with the chief command of the British army--much against the will of the Ministry-not because anybody conceived

that he was fit for the important charge, but solely and entirely because it was known that he was so complaisant and so infirm that he would be ready to vacate it whenever the public mind was sufficiently calmed to allow the Duke to return in safety to the Horse Guards. And this at a moment when Bonaparte was thundering at our gates, when the gigantic Walcheren failure was impending, and when we were about to enter upon the Peninsular war!

The revelations now made respecting the Duke of York and Mrs. Clarke, are strongly illustrative of the difficulties which attend the writer of contemporary history. Sir A. Alison expresses his conviction that the Duke was an innocent man, sacrificed to the ambition of selfish faction and the fury of 'misguided zeal;' and quotes in corroboration of his views a paragraph from a complimentary letter, addressed in 1811, by Sir Arthur Wellesley, in Portugal, to the Duke of York's military secretary in London, congratulating His Royal Highness and the army on his re-instatement in office; and speaking of it as a matter of justice to him and of benefit to the public 'service.' Sir Archibald also points out how much harm the blind rage of Romilly, Wilberforce, Lord H. Petty, and other political desperadoes of the same kidney wrought to the public service in 1809, by expelling from it a public-spirited prince whose judicious reforms and practical improvements had made the army what it was, and by placing it in new and inexperienced ' hands.' We are now afforded an opportunity of judging whether Sir Arthur Wellesley really believed in the Duke's innocence or not; and if he did not, it is difficult to imagine how His Royal Highness's re-instatement could be considered as a matter of justice to him.' That he was an abler administrator than costive old David,' as Sir Arthur contemptuously calls his successor, may readily be conceded; but that Sir Archibald has been happy in applying to Sir David_the epithets of new and inexperienced,' admits of dispute. In a letter from Mr. Fremantle to the Duke of Buckingham, dated 24th March, 1809, we find, The change of the Commander-in-Chief is limited to the person himself; all the 'staff remains, and I understand nothing is to be moved or altered either in the establishment or the system.'

6

6

Early in April 1809, Sir Arthur Wellesley resigned his Irish office and prepared to leave England to assume the chief command of the British Army in Portugal. Those who are conversant with his despatches will easily recall to mind that the deplorable accounts of the condition and discipline of the army contained in his letters to Lord Castlereagh from

Abrantes,, a very few weeks after his arrival in the Peninsula, sadly belied the ornate picture which he had drawn before the House of Commons, of the surpassing qualities of the officers and troops which had enjoyed the supreme advantage of being formed by the late Commander-in-Chief. Thus, having landed at Lisbon on the 22nd April, the late Irish Secretary writes to Lord Castlereagh from Coimbra on the 1st May :

'The army behave terribly ill. They are a rabble who cannot bear success any more than Sir John Moore's army could bear failure. I am endeavouring to tame them, but if I should not succeed I must make an official complaint of them and send one or two corps home in disgrace. They plunder in all directions.'

And again, six weeks later, from Abrantes (June 17th):

'I cannot, with propriety, omit to draw your attention again to the state of discipline of the army, which is a subject of serious concern to me, and well deserves the consideration of His Majesty's Ministers.'

as the

That Sir Arthur Wellesley should have succeeded in working this rude and raw material into an excellent army Peninsular war wore on is one of the strongest proofs of his surpassing military genius; where he was, during the next five years, there was, almost invariably, success and victory; elsewhere, at Walcheren, at Tarragona, in America, the British arms fared little better than they had done any time during the preceding quarter of a century: but what can we say or think of his evidence on the Duke of York's trial, when we read, but a few weeks afterwards, his jeremiads from Coimbra and Abrantes?

VOL. CXI. NO. CCXXVI.

F F

ART. VI.-L'Eglise et l'Empire Romain au IVme Siècle. Par le PRINCE ALBERT DE BROGLIE. 4 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1856-1859.

THE work before us has reached the extent of four volumes, and two more, apparently, will be required to complete it. It will embrace the civil and ecclesiastical history of the Roman world during the century which stands, at least in its most important aspect, at the commencement of modern times, and must always retain a corresponding interest to the student of theology and of politics. It will be evident from the bulk to which M. de Broglie's labours have swelled, that he proposes to treat this great subject fully and comprehensively, and to render his work both a storehouse of facts, and at the same time an exhaustive disquisition upon them. Such an undertaking, if adequately performed, becomes the heritage not of one country only, but of all civilised people; and we shall not exceed the limits to which the notices of this journal have occasionally extended, in giving an account of a work which may be expected to take rank in the common literature of Christendom.

To understand and to portray this prominent epoch in human history, it is essential that it should be approached in a religious and reverential spirit. The revolutions of the fourth century were the work of great ideas; the conflicts of opinion by which they were animated, were far stronger than any that the world had ever before witnessed, and operated, perhaps, through a more extended area than any similar conflicts at a later period. But these opinions were stirred up from the very depths of man's spiritual nature, and lie beyond the experience of the mere intellect. The dispassionate calmness of the philosopher or sceptic cannot see the hand which beckons the enthusiast, nor hear the voice which summons him. It may be true, indeed, that the world has not yet seen the religious mind which was wholly free from the illusions of sectarianism, and we may be content to meet with a historian of the Church and Empire, who believes in the Church as a divine institution, without cavilling at the peculiar limitation he puts upon it, or the system under the trammels of which he has chosen to place himself. The author of the volumes before us declares himself a Romanist, and his writings sufficiently evince the sincerity of his profession. He shows in the plainest manner the colours under which he sails; he has submitted such parts at least of his work as treat of theological topics, to the inspection of ecclesiastical authority.

'I need hardly add that as a layman, and no professed theologian, I have taken care, whenever I have been obliged, for the understanding of the history, to treat of points which touch on our sacred dogmas, to subject my work to the examination of competent authorities. If, however, on topics naturally so foreign to my studies, any error has escaped me, it is assuredly involuntary, and shall be retracted as soon as discovered. I have not studied the history of the Church to be ignorant of the first duty of every believer.' (P. xiv.)

Such words as these, standing, as they ought, in the preface to M. de Broglie's history, put us at once on our guard, and allow us to feel at ease with our author. We regard him, not as an individual inquirer, but as the exponent of a system; he is the representative of a sect, and reflects the views implicitly entertained by the mass of his co-religionists. Mr. Emerson says, with elaborate irony, that when we meet a bishop in conversation at the dinner-table, there is nothing to be done but to ask him to take wine. We may leave the dignitaries of our own communion to protest, if they will, against the application to themselves of such contemptuous courtesy; but M. de Broglie, by this avowal; has fairly withdrawn himself from the lists of controversy, and we shall, for our own part, abstain from breaking a lance with a champion who fights behind a crowd, if we may not rather say, behind a cloud of polemics. It will be readily understood, that throughout the history of the fourth century there are innumerable questions not of inference only but of fact, and especially of the authority of documents, upon which the Christian Churches of the nineteenth are still irreconcileably at variance; and we may smile at the simplicity or the guile with which a true son of the Papacy silently takes his ground respecting them, but we shall not be tempted to discuss them. We are thankful, once for all, for the religious point of view from which our author regards the general subject, which seems essential to its right comprehension, and we are pleased with the impression he leaves on us of liberality and intelligence, wherever he is free to exhibit them. We only regret that the position assumed by a Romish layman cannot always consist with real force of character, with strong and clear conceptions, or with vigorous and uncompromising logic.

The execution of the history before us is neatly finished, though with some deficiency, as might be expected, in energy and spirit. It is a polished rhetorical exercitation, rather than a genuine portraiture of men and things as impressed on the visual organs of the imagination. There is, indeed, as far as we can see, no want of fairness in the representation of individuals. Constantine is described with that blending of good and evil