related in such a manner as to furnish not | uncut; the magazines and newspapers fill their columns with extracts. In the mean time histories of great empires, written by men of eminent ability, lie unread on the shelves of ostentatious libraries.

He who would understand these things rightly must not confine his observations to palaces and solemn days. He must see ordinary men as they appear in their ordinary business and in their ordinary pleasures. He must mingle in the crowds of the exchange and the coffeehouse. He must obtain admittance to the convivial table and the domestic hearth. He must bear with vulgar expressions. He must not shrink from exploring even the 'etreats of Bishop Watson compares a geologist to a misery. He who wishes to understand the gnat mounted on an elephant, and laying down condition of mankind in former ages, must theories as to the whole internal structure of proceed on the same principle. If he attends the vast animal, from the phenomena of the only to public transactions, to wars, conhide. The comparison is unjust to the geolo-gresses, and debates, his studies will be as ungists; but it is very applicable to those historians who write as if the body politic were homogeneous, who look only on the surface of affairs, and never think of the mighty and various organization which lies deep below.

events. They are not achieved by armies, or its dimensions, and has then departed, think. enacted by senates. They are sanctioned by ing that he has seen England. He has, in fact, no treaties, and recorded in no archives. They seen a few public buildings, public men, and are carried on in every school, in every church, public ceremonies. But of the vast and combehind ten thousand counters, at ten thousand plex system of society, of the fine shades of firesides. The upper current of society pre-national character, of the practical operation sents no certain criterion by which we can of government and laws, he knows nothing. judge of the direction in which the under current flows. We read of defeats and victories. But we know that nations may be miserable amidst victories, and prosperous amidst defeats. We read of the fall of wise ministers, and of the rise of profligate favourites. But we must remember how small a proportion the good or evil effected by a single statesman can bear to the good or evil of a great social system.

profitable as the travels of those imperial, royal, and serene sovereigns, who form their judgment of our island from having gone in state to a few fine sights, and from having held formal conferences with a few great officers.

In the works of such writers as these, Eng- The perfect historian is he in whose work land, at the close of the Seven Years' War, is the character and spirit of an age is exhibited in the highest state of prosperity. At the in miniature. He relates no fact, he attributes close of the American War, she is in a mise- no expression to his characters, which is not rable and degraded condition; as if the people authenticated by sufficient testimony. But by were not on the whole as rich, as well go- judicious selection, rejection, and arrangeverned, and as well educated, at the latter ment, he gives to truth those attractions which period as at the former. We have read have been usurped by fiction. In his narrabooks called Histories of England, under the tive, a due subordination is observed; some reign of George the Second, in which the rise transactions are prominent, others retire. But of Methodism is not even mentioned. A hun- the scale on which he represents them is indred years hence this breed of authors will, we creased or diminished, not according to the hope, be extinct. If it should still exist, the dignity of the persons concerned in them, but late ministerial interregnum will be described according to the degree in which they eluci in terms which will seem to imply that all go-date the condition of society and the nature of vernment was at an end; that the social con- man. He shows us the court, the camp, and tract was annulled, and that the hand of every man was against his neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue of the new cabinet educed order out of the chaos of anarchy. We are quite certain that misconceptions as gross prevail at this moment, respecting many important parts of our annals.

the senate. But he shows us also the nation He considers no anecdote, no peculiarity of manner, no familiar saying, as too insignifi cant for his notice, which is not too insignificant to illustrate the operation of laws, of religion, and of education, and to mark the progress of the human mind. Men will not The effect of historical reading is analogous, merely be described, but will be made intiin many respects, to that produced by foreign mately known to us. The changes of mantravel. The student, like the tourist, is trans-ners will be indicated, not merely by a few ported into a new state of society. He sees general phrases, or a few extracts from stanew fashions. He hears new modes of ex-tistical documents, but by appropriate images pression. His mind is enlarged by contem- presented in every line. plating the wide diversities of laws, of morals, and of manners. But men may travel far, and return with minds as contracted as if they had never stirred from their own market-town. In the same manner, men may know the dates of many battles, and the genealogies of many royal houses, and yet be no wiser. Most people look at past times, as princes look at foreign countries. More than one illustrious stranger has landed on our island amidst the shouts of a mob, has dined with the King, has hunted with the master of the stag-hounds, has seen the Guards reviewed, and a knight of the garter installed; has cantered along Regent street; has visited St. Paul's, and noted down VOL. I.-9

If a man, such as we are supposing, should write the history of England, he would assuredly not omit the battles, the sieges, the negotiations, the seditions, the ministerial changes. But with these he would intersperse the details which are the charm of historical romances. At Lincoln Cathedral there is a beautiful painted window, which was made by an apprentice out of the pieces of glass which had been rejected by his master. It is so far superior to every other in the church, that, according to the tradition, the vanquished artist killed himselt from mortification. Sir Walter Scott, in the same manner, has used those fragments of truth which historians have T 2

scornfully thrown behind them, in a manner | a great artist might produce a portrait of this which may well excite their envy. He has remarkable woman, at least as striking as that constructed out of their gleanings works in the novel of Kenilworth, without employing which, even considered as histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But a truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the novelist has appropriated. The history of the government and the history of the people would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they can be exhibited justly, in inseparable conjunction and intermixture. We should not then have to look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology in Old Mortality; for one half of King James in Hume, and for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel.

families, before they manifested themselves in Parliamentary debates. Then would come the Civil War. Those skirmishes, on which Clarendon dwells so minutely, would be told, as Thucydides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. They are merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the royal causethe austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the Independent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans-the valour, the policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these ungraceful disguises, the dreams of the raving Fifth Monarchyman, the dreams, scarce ly less wild, of the philosophic republican-all these would enter into the representation, and render it at once more exact and more strik

a single trait not authenticated by ample testimony. In the mean time, we should see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the couveniences of life improved. We should see the keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them, gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnaçles of Burleigh. We should see towns extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his hut more commodiously furnished. We should see The early part of our imaginary history those opinions and feelings which produced would be rich with colouring from romance, the great struggle against the house of Stuart, ballad, and chronicle. We should find our-slowly growing up in the bosom of private selves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as those who rode with Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest-from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw; from the throne of the legate to the chimney-corner where the begging friar regaled himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaders the stately monastery, with the good cheer in its refectory, and the high-mass in its chapel-the manor-house, with its hunting and hawking-the tournament, with the heralds and ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of gold-would give truth and life to the representation. We should perceive, in a thousand slight touches, the importance of the privileged burgher, and the fierce and haughty spirit which swelled under the collar of the degraded villain. The revival of letters would not merely be described in a few magnificent periods. We should discern, in innumerable particulars, the fermentation of mind, the eager appetite for knowledge, which distinguished the sixteenth from the fifteenth century. In ing. the Reformation we should see, not merely a The instruction derived from history thus schism which changed the ecclesiastical con-written would be of a vivid and practical chastitution of England, and the mutual relationsracter. It would be received by the imaginaof the European powers, but a moral war tion as well as by the reason. It would be not which raged in every family, which set the father against the son, and the son against the father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should have the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his savage and imperious old age. We should perceive the gradual progress of selfish and tyrannical passions, in a mind not naturally insensible or ungenerous; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness, and in all her strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted, and the wise old statesmen, whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself the most contradictory qualities of both her parentsthe coquetry, the caprice, the petty malice of Anne-the haughty and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesitation in saying, that |

merely traced on the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which ordinarily proceed far, before their progress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events. A narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as a me[dical treatise which should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early stage of a disease, and mention only what occurs when the patient is beyond the reach of remedies.

An historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed be an intellectual prodigy. In his mind, powers, scarcely com patible with each other, must be tempered into

the painting could be, though it were the grandest that ever Rosa peopled with outlaws, or the sweetest over which Claude ever poured the mellow effulgence of a setting sun.

It is remarkable that the practice of separat

HISTORY, at least in its state of imaginary | companion to the traveller or the general than perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind by a vivid representation of particular characters and incidents. But, in fact, the two hostile elements of which it consists have never been known to form a perfect amalgama-ing the two ingredients of which history is tion; and at length, in our own time, they have composed has become prevalent on the Contibeen completely and professedly separated. nent as well as in this country. Italy has alGood histories, in the proper sense of the word, ready produced an historical novel, of high merit we have not. But we have good historical ro- and of still higher promise. In France, the mances and good historical essays. The ima-practice has been carried to a length somegination and the reason, if we may use a legal what whimsical. M. Sismondi publishes a metaphor, have made partition of a province grave and stately history, very valuable, and a of literature of which they were formerly little tedious. He then sends forth as a comseised per my et pour tout; and now they hold panion to it a novel, in which he attempts to their respective portions in severalty, instead give a lively representation of characters and of holding the whole in common. manners. This course, as it seems to us, has

as in the Maître Jaques of Molière, we do not see that the matter is much mended by the solemn form with which the pluralist passes from one of his employments to the other.

To make the past present, to bring the dis-all_the disadvantages of a division of labour, tant near, to place us in the society of a great and none of its advantages. We understand man, or on the eminence which overlooks the the expediency of keeping the functions of field of a mighty battle, to invest with the reali- cook and coachman distinct-the dinner will ty of human flesh and blood beings whom we be better dressed, and the horses better maare too much inclined to consider as personi-naged. But where the two situations are united, fied qualities in an allegory, to call up our ancestors before us with all their peculiarities of language, manners, and garb, to show us over their houses, to seat us at their tables, to rummage their old-fashioned wardrobes, to explain We manage these things better in England. the uses of their ponderous furniture-these Sir Walter Scott gives us a novel; Mr. Hallam parts of the duty which properly belongs to the a critical and argumentative history. Both are historian have been appropriated by the histo- occupied with the same matter. But the forrical novelist. On the other hand, to extract mer looks at it with the eye of a sculptor. His the philosophy of history-to direct our judg-intention is to give an express and lively ment of events and men-to trace the connec-image of its external form. The latter is an tion of causes and effects, and to draw from the anatomist. His task is to dissect the subject to occurrences of former times general lessons of its inmost recesses, and to lay bare before us all moral and political wisdom, has become the the springs of motion and all the causes of debusiness of a distinct class of writers. cay.

Of the two kinds of composition into which Mr. Hallam is, on the whole, far better qualihistory has been thus divided, the one may be fied than any other writer of our time for the compared to a map, the other to a painted land- office which he has undertaken. He has great scape. The picture, though it places the ob-industry and great acuteness. His knowledge ject before us, does not enable us to ascertain is extensive, various, and profound. His mind with accuracy the form and dimensions of its is equally distinguished by the amplitude of component parts, the distances, and the angles. The map is not a work of imitative art. It presents no scene to the imagination; but it gives us exact information as to the bearings of the various points, and is a more useful

* The Constitutional History of England, from the Accession of Henry VII. to the Death of George II. By HENRY HALLAM. In 2 vols. 1827.

its grasp and by the delicacy of its tact. His speculations have none of that vagueness which is the common fault of political philoso phy. On the contrary, they are strikingly practical. They teach us not only the general rule, but the mode of applying it to solve par ticular cases. In this respect they often re mind us of the Discourses of Machiaveli

The style is sometimes harsh, and sometimes hend the meaning latent under the emblems of obscure. We have also here and there remark- their faith, can resist the contagion of the ed a little of that unpleasant trick which Gib-popular superstition. Often, when they flatter bon brought into fashion-the trick, we mean, themselves that they are merely feigning a of narrating by implication and allusion. Mr. compliance with the prejudices of the vulgar, Hallam, however, has an excuse which Gib- they are themselves under the influence of bon had not. His work is designed for readers those very prejudices. It probably was not who are already acquainted with the ordinary altogether on grounds of expediency, that Sobooks on English history, and who can there- crates taught his followers to honour the gods fore unriddle these little enigmas without dif- whom the state honoured, and bequeathed a ficulty. The manner of the book is, on the cock to Esculapius with his dying breath. So whole, not unworthy of the matter. The lan- | there is often a portion of willing credulity and guage, even where most faulty, is weighty and enthusiasm in the veneration which the most massive, and indicates strong sense in every discerning men pay to their political idols. line. It often rises to an eloquence, not florid From the very nature of man it must be so. or impassioned, but high, grave, and sober; The faculty by which we inseparably associate such as would become a state paper, or a judg- ideas which have often been presented to us ment delivered by a great magistrate, a Somers, in conjunction, is not under the absolute conor a D'Aguesseau. trol of the will. It may be quickened into morbid activity. It may be reasoned into sluggishness. But in a certain degree it will always exist. The almost absolute mastery

which Mr. Hallam has obtained over feelings of this class, is perfectly astonishing to us; and will, we believe, be not only astonishing, but offensive to many of his readers. It must particularly disgust those people who, in their

In this respect the character of Mr. Hallam's mind corresponds strikingly with that of his style. His work is eminently judicial. Its whole spirit is that of the bench, not of the bar. He sums up with a calm, steady impartiality, turning neither to the right nor to the left, glossing over nothing, exaggerating nothing, while the advocates on both sides are alternately biting their lips to hear their conflict-speculations on politics, are not reasoners, but ing mis-statements and sophisms exposed. On a general survey, we do not scruple to pronounce the Constitutional History the most impartial book that we ever read. We think it the more incumbent on us to bear this testimony strongly at first setting out, because, in the course of our remarks, we shall think it right to dwell principally on those parts of it from which we dissent.

fanciers; whose opinions, even when sincere, are not produced, according to the ordinary law of intellectual births, by induction and inference, but are equivocally generated by the heat of fervid tempers out of the overflowings of tumid imaginations. A man of this class is always in extremes. He cannot be a friend to liberty without calling for a community of goods, or a friend to order without taking under his protection the foulest excesses of tyranny. His admiration oscillates between the most worthless of rebels and the most worthless of oppressors; between Marten, the scandal of the High Court of Justice, and Laud, the scandal of the Star-Chamber. He can forgive any thing but temperance and impartiality. He has a certain sympathy with the violence of his opponents, as well as with that of his associates. In every furious partisan he sees either his present self or his former self, the pensioner that is or the Jacobin that has been. But he is unable to comprehend a writer who, steadily attached to principles, is indifferent about names and badges; who judges of characters with equable severity, not altogether untinctured with cynicism, but free from the slightest touch of passion, party spirit, or caprice.

There is one peculiarity about Mr. Hallam, which, while it adds to the value of his writings, will, we fear, take away something from their popularity. He is less of a worshipper than any historian whom we can call to mind. Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school; its abstract doctrines for the initiated, its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables for the vulgar. It assists the devotion of those who are unable to raise themselves to the contemplation of pure truths, by all the devices of Pagan or Papal superstition. It has its altars and its deified heroes, its relics and pilgrimages, its canonized martyrs and confessors, its festivals and its legendary miracles. Our pious ancestors, we are told, deserted the High Altar of Canterbury, to lay all their oblations on the shrine of St. Thomas. In the same manner the great and comfortable doctrines of the Tory creed, those particularly which relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by squires and rectors, in Pitt Clubs, under the name of a minister, who was as bad a repre*ntative of the system which has been chrisned after him, as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. And, on the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field, and Sidney on the scaffold, is enthusiastically toasted by many an honest radical, who would be puzzled No portion of our annals has been more per to explain the difference between Ship-money plexed and misrepresented by writers of dif and the Habeas Corpus act. It may be added, ferent parties, than the history of the Reforma that, as in religion, so in politics, few, even of tion. In this labyrinth of falsehood and so oes who are enlightened enough to compre-phistry, the guidance of Mr. Hallam is pecu

We should probably like Mr. Hallam's book more, if instead of pointing out, with strict fidelity, the bright points and the dark spots of both parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the one and to blacken the other. But we should certainly prize it far less. Eulogy and invective may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice--the one weight and the one measure-we know not where else we can look.