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he had in the game of chess. From all that is incidently gathered, there is every reason to think that the companion whom he had chosen. made his home a happy one; enthusiastically attached to King Charles, he espoused his cause most warmly, and his thoughts and his pen were constantly employed in its service; but to his lasting honor it may be said, that Drummond appeared alike divested of partiality and prejudice, at a time when reason might have been blinded by excitement: he could plainly see and point out the errors of Government, and he could tolerate the opinions which differed from his own. His writings were directed to the maintenance of peace, and none ever served his sovereign with more devoted zeal, or with clearer views of his true interest. The deep concern he took in the royal cause, exposed him to great hostility when the Civil War broke out; the last proof which he gave of his affection for Charles was indeed an affecting one. When he found that his royal master was beheaded, he fell into a deep melancholy; he languished but for a few months, and then died.. The last lines which he is supposed to have written, run thus:

"Love, which is here a care That wit and will doth mar,

Uncertain truce, and a most certain war;
A shrill tempestuous wind

Which doth disturb the mind,

'And like wild waves, all our designs commove. -Among those powers above

Which see their Maker's face,

It a contentment is, a quiet peace,

A pleasure void of grief, a constant rest, Eternal joy which nothing can molest!"

Drummond was buried in the church of Lasswade, in the neighborhood of Hawthornden. Lasswade is indeed a most fitting spot for the last resting place of the poet; its quiet pastoral beauty; the river gliding gently on, seeming in its flow to tell of repose and peace; and the lovely scenery by "sweet glen and greenwood tree," through which it bends its way, make Lasswade, with all its pleasant paths, one of the most lovely spots which can be met with anywhere. Nor can we forget that it was here Scott spent some of his happiest hours; it was his favorite haunt in boyhood, and here the first days of his married life, and some succeeding summers were passed, in the indulgence of the simple tastes which so often mark minds of the highest stamp. He loved to trim the garden of his cottage, to cultivate its flowers, and train its creeping plants; he constructed a rustic archway as an entrance to his humble abode. " Nor," I have heard him say, Lockhart tells, "was he prouder of any work than of this." The romantic solitudes by the banks of the.Esk, where he delighted to stroll-Roslin with its rocks and glen,—and sweet Hawthornden,

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NEW WORK OF HARTLEY COLERIDGE.Hartley Coleridge's "Lives of Northern Worthies" has just appeared under the editorial care of his brother, to whom the public owes the interesting and pathetic memoir and the collection of poems and Marginali, of a

man whose brief career was at once uneventful and tragic. The sonnets of Hartley Coleridge are not surpassed by any in the language. When will Messrs. Ticknor, Reed & Fields, of Boston, issue their long-announced reprint of his life and poems.

From the British Quarterly Review.

STEPHEN'S HISTORY OF FRANCE.*

IN reading Sir James Stephen there is much to remind us of Mr. Macaulay. The points in which they resemble each other are sufficiently observable to render the points in. which there is a difference only the more interesting. We may add, too, that something besides the possession of kindred gifts has contributed to place these two names in relationship. The fathers of these gentlemen were public men of great worth, and fast friends; and the sons grew up in habits of intimacy both at home and at college. Mr. Macaulay, with the slight interruption occasioned by his visit to India, has been wedded, as the world knows, all his life to literature. Sir James Stephen, on the other hand, has been occupied until somewhat beyond the meridian of his days in professional or official duties. His powers of labor are prodigious. As Under Secretary for the Colonies, his mastery of all questions relating to the history and state of our colonial empire was such, we suspect, as no second man in the kingdom possessed, and such as scarcely any second man could have acquired. An odd kind of paradise to a man of cultivated genius that world of state-papers must have been! But though divorced from literature comparatively during a great part of life, Sir James has been gradually returning to it for some years past; and the productions which have been the result may assist us in judging as to the success with which he would have occupied this ground; had it been, as in the case of Mr. Macaulay, his only ground. We scarcely need say that Mr. Macaulay wrote himself into fame as a contributor to the Edinburgh Review. The same may be said of Sir James Stephen. Mr. Macaulay has now withdrawn from periodical literature, and is employing his powers in a walk of authorship more independent and personal. In

*Lectures on the History of France. By the Right Honorable Sir JAMES STEPHEN, K.C.B., LL.D., Professor of Modern History in the University of Cambridge. 2 vols. 8vo. London: Longman. 1851.

this respect, also, the two friends have their course in common.

Both writers are remarkable for the extent of their reading. The reading of Mr. Macaulay, from his having been ever either reading or writing, is probably more discursive and extraordinary than that of his distinguished friend. But the writings of Sir James Stephen exhibit him as a man whose tastes have been always disposing him to make excursions into widely diversified fields of authorship. In literature, we find both bringing within their cognizance, and under the power of their analysis, the well-known and the little known, the light and the ponderous-works which weak men would overlook as insignificant, and works on which even the strong look with dismay, because swollen into libraries, the ore that may be in them having its place as in the midst of a continent of material not very pleasant to deal with. In the power of steady and laborious reading we are inclined to give precedence to Sir James. Few would have had patience to read as our author must have read, in order to write as he has written, on Luther, and Calvin, and Baxter; on St. Francis and Loyola; on the Port-Royalists and the Bollandists. Mr. Macaulay would seem to be endowed with a more restless literary activity, with a more intense and ceaseless curiosity about books, and about what may be seen of humanity through the spectacles of books; and with a memory, if report speaks truly, of more wonderful tenacity than can be attributed to Sir James Stephen. But we are, we think, quite safe, in saying, that if Sir James has read somewhat less than Mr. Macaulay, he has reflected more. If he has not travelled so far over the surface of history as his learned friend, it is because he has more frequently descended beneath that surface. If he be not so fully versed in all that men have done, it is because he has felt prompted to concern himself with a prior question-the question as to what men are. That question-the

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whence and why of humanity-though in it-
self the question of questions, is one with
which Mr. Macaulay will hold no parley-
no, not for a moment. No enchanter ever
kept more resolutely within his circle than
does Mr. Macaulay within his boundary-line
of the seen and temporal. His own individ-
uality is marked-potent; but, there is no
conscious subjectivity in him. He lives to
the outward, the inward is left to care for it-to
self. His universe of being, past and pres-
ent, is, for the most part, a universe of pic-
tures. It is nearly all made up of what the
eye can see, the ear can listen to, or the
hand can touch. His main business is with
the good or bad acting that has taken place
in the world, not so much with the actors.
The surface deed, and the surface motive,
are vividly before you; but rarely does he
disclose to you anything more latent.

With Sir James Stephen, however, it is not so. He must descend deeper, and as the consequence he must ascend higher. The more he sees of what man has done, the more earnest becomes his inquiry as to what man is; and the more he explores the chambers of the human spirit, the stronger is the feeling which impels him to ascend to the oracle of a higher Spirit, and to ask gråve questions THERE. In this fact we have our explanation of the circumstance that the department of reading and authorship on which Sir James Stephen has bestowed the greatest attention, viz., the lives of religious men as such, is that on which Mr. Macaulay would appear to have bestowed the least. Of course, it is manifest enough, that the author of the memorable papers in the Edinburgh Review on Ranke's Lives of the Popes, and on Lord Bacon, must have read considerably both in the history of the Church and in the history of philosophy. But it is no less clear, that, from some cause, Mr. Macaulay has the power of treating even such themes, so as to be capable of infusing into them an extraordinary energy, and of throwing over them an extraordinary brilliancy; and, at the same time, a manner which leaves all the vital questions that should be suggested by them wholly untouched. The pictures which pass before you are pictures of things as they are, not of things as they ought to be. Not that this is consciously done. Mr. Macaulay's sympathies are generous and noble. In so far as he is at all a teacher, his teaching is of admirable quality; but his bias is, we have said on a former occasion, to sink the instructor in the painter, the prophet in the artist.

But all sins, even the sins of omission, are retributive. The man who contents himself with being merely artistic, will not rise to the highest eminence even as an artist. Man is not a being of intellect only. He is a moral and religious being. This is to be remembered by those who would discourse of him with the desired fulness, or to him with the desired effect. The artist, speaking us from the marble, the canvas, or through human speech, must know humanity-know it, and have strong sympathy with it in its highest forms of spiritual beauty and sublimity, if he would depict it effectively in those forms. It is not too much to say, that the degree in which men of genius have failed in their aspirations has resulted more from their want of goodness, than from their want of genius. If Milton had not felt how awful goodness is, his description of it would never have been given to us. So in a thousand instances beside.

'Herein lies the difference between what is called Christian art and Pagan art. Christianity presents manifestations of beauty and greatness other than are found elsewhere, and higher than are found elsewere; and the artist who would depict them truly, must have come so far under their influence as to have felt their attraction, so as to have been fascinated, as it were, into the study of them. That he should fail in such attempts it is not necessary that he should be a bad man,-it is enough that he is not a good man, and that somewhat in the Christian sense of goodness. This new beauty and new greatness, which came to humanity nearly two thousand years since, have never ceased to be part of it-the purer, the nobler, the progressive part of it.

Nothing is farther from our thought than to say, that men of Mr. Macaulay's powers should never give themselves to writing without intending to preach. We have no such meaning. Goethe is not a person to be classed among saints but he appears to have had his seasons in which he came under the influence of all good along with all evil, and to have concentrated his thought intensely, at intervals, on both. As the result, his estimate of religion in its relation to humanity was such as to dispose him to assign to its subtle, complex, and powerful influence, a large space in every development of man. In his view, to ignore religion in man was to ignore the most potent and productive element of his nature; and to ignore the Christian religion, was to ignore the religious as diffusing its creative and its forma

tive power over all things human in the highest degree.

sorry to say, however, that history, as it comes to us from the pen of Mr. Macaulay, is not a little wanting in these higher qualities. It is true, readers who read little history beside, will read it as given to them by him; but we venture to affirm, that few men of the class whose opinions Mr. Macaulay himself would most value, ever think of looking to his historical portraitures for anything more than an approach towards the exact truth. The great outline may be in the main correct, and the impression conveyed by it may be in the main a just impression; but to feel that as you descend from the outline to the filling up, your every step, becomes uncertain, and that as you test the impression you have received, it proves to be in great part vague and unauthenticated, because your knowledge has been of that nature, is not very satisfactory. As this process of discovery goes on, sense of obligation to your guide naturally diminishes. You have ever to bear in mind, that, from the fear of becoming tedious, he rarely gives you the whole truth; and that from the ardor of his sympathy with the bold. and the dramatic, he is always liable to be betrayed into exaggeration.

In touching thus far on the defective in these respects, so observable in the writings of Mr. Macaulay, we are not influenced by a shade of unfriendly feeling towards him. We simply regret that, with powers so extraordinary, he should content himself, in the main, with themes so ordinary; that, possessing so much of the genius of the artist, the art, after all, should not be of that higher description towards which such genius should aspire. Nothing can exceed the vividness with which he depicts characters and manners within the limits which he has prescribed to himself. But his success within those limits appears to have become his snare. It seems to have precluded him from aiming at anything higher. His latest efforts are simply repetitions of his earliest. The material or the subject changes, but the handicraft brought to it is everywhere the same. The manner natural to him from the first was singularly adapted to startle and fascinate, and to the present moment he would seem to have been distrustful of all change. Now we admire Mr. Macaulay's force quite as much, we think, as our neighbors, but we do at times feel the Mr. Macaulay predicted, long since, that want of a little more discrimination. We were the history of England written accordare as sensible, we think, as we ought to be ing to his conception of the manner in which to his brilliancy, but there are moments in it should be written, people would flock for which we feel obliged to suspect that the it to the circulating libraries as for the last patient scrutiny has not been such as to new novel. History has since been written ensure that it is all gold that glitters. We after this conception; and it must be adnever cease to be charmed with his rheto- mitted that the prophecy has been fulfilled. ric-with the pith sometimes concentrated in But did it not occur to Mr. Macaulay to ask a single word, with the point given to an whether history be really a subject which, antithesis, and with the mighty sweep of the [from its own nature, can be successfully invective; but the drawback lies in our dis-treated after this manner? No doubt the trust as to the exact truth of what is thrown off in terms so unmitigated, so absolute. It is true, the man who must discriminate is in danger of becoming dull; and the man who would be profound will be sometimes obscure; while the man who resolves that his rhetoric shall be so curbed and attempered as to become a vehicle fitted to convey all the nicer shades of truth, is likely to move at a pace not quite so swift as the wings of the wind;-and with Mr. Macaulay, to be dull, to be obscure, to move slowly, would appear to be the sin of all sins in authorshipthe sin never to be forgiven.

Nevertheless, discrimination there must be, thoroughness there must be, and a cautious accuracy there must be, in the historian who aspires to be a guide to the wise, an authority to the just, a model to the truthful.

We

are

history of the English bar, or of the English parliament, would afford a field for much picturesque description, and much eloquent discourse, to any gifted man; but could the history of either be made to present the facts, the discriminations, the reasonings, proper to a history, and be still a book to attract crowds to the circulating-libraries? We need not attempt to answer the question. It is very much thus with the history of England. Lectures or orations upon history may be made to take with them all the attraction prédicted by Mr. Macaulay; but we feel bound to think that it is not possible that history proper should be made to serve two masters in the manner attempted by him. History which people crowd after as for the last new novel, cannot be history of the kind to be highly prized where there is a just per

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ception as to the nature of history. It may be rich in all the effulgence of genius as everything Mr. Macaulay does is sure to bebut to be the popular affair which he would make it, the true idea of history must be relinquished, and powerful writing on the more salient or dramatic points of history must be substituted in its room.

charity on many who have aberrated the most widely from a wisdom and self-government like his own. This feeling, indeed, together with his love of the artistic, has led him, we think, in some cases, to pass somewhat lightly over evils that he should have branded, and to convey a general impression in respect to certain men and sysOur strictures on Mr. Macaulay have tems greatly more favorable than truth would reached to a greater length than we had in-warrant. Some of his ecclesiastical biogratended; but the reader will see how this has happened. It has resulted from that association of ideas which Aristotle tells us is equally affected by the laws of resemblance and contrast.

Sir James Stephen, in common with his friend, is desirous of writing, not for scholars merely, but for the community. Hence, from his pen also, history has hitherto consisted not so much of history proper, as of résumés of history-of discourses upon it. He has had a similar dread of being found tedious, or dull, and has aimed with a similar steadiness of purpose to secure attention from people not largely endowed with that power, by giving his broad sketches of the past more in the style of the orator than in that of the historian, and by throwing a pictorial, a dramatic, and sometimes a poetic richness over his fields of thought. But with these indications in common, Sir James's narrative, especially in the volumes now before us, exhibits more discrimination, more fullness, more simplicity, thinking much more carefully wrought out, and feeling much riper, than we find in Mr. Macaulay. That he might diffuse these qualities through his writings, he has been prepared to hazard some loss in the way of popularity. In passionate mental force, Sir James does not rival Mr. Macaulay; but his mind is of greater depth, and, taken as a whole, of richer combinations. In the volumes before us there are passages which, as examples of condensed power, and of clearness and vigor in expression, could not be surpassed; but it is not the manner of the the author to put himself upon the strain for effect in this form. If he is to be a favorite with the community, it must be, in a good degree, on his own terms. He is not unwilling to be a popular writer, but he must at the same time, be the scholar, the philosopher, the Christian. He has all the humane feeling of Mr. Macaulay, and more than all, but it is more quiet, more courtly; it is feeling which prompts to caution more often than to boldness. It is in him, not an occasional force, so much as a mellowed habit. It has disposed him to look with a very large

phies are, in our judgment, open to strong exception of this kind. Neither the Roman system, nor Roman saints, are entitled to anything like the leniency he has shown them. That system has ever been, in the main, a great, a most corrupting lie; and never more so than at this hour. In many places it is as sensuous as it ever was;' and everywhere it is, in its general development, the ambitious, pitiless, denaturalizing, jesuitical thing it has ever been.

Nevertheless, the works of Sir James Stephen have a place of their own among us. His ecclesiastical biographies do not come up to the standard of genuine history so nearly as the chapters of Mr. Hallam. But in the lectures before us we have a fullness and a discrimination often reminding us of that distinguished writer, and this allied generally with a fluency, a force, and an eloquence of style such as Mr. Hallam rarely exhibits. They are in our literature what the lectures of Guizot, and other eminent men, have become in French literature. In the manner of those writers, Sir James Stephen has contented himself with a general reference to the authors whom he has taken chiefly as his guides. We regret this, because, though the custom of giving references at the foot of the page is often overdone among our German, neighbors, and not always honestly done among ourselves, it affords the means of readily testing the accuracy of an author, and in history, is all but indispensable to the man who would become himself an authority.

The first four lectures give a masterly view of the decline and fall of the RomanoGallic province, and of the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties. The third lecture is wholly occupied with a powerful and highly laudatory delineation of the character and influence of Charlemagne.

The chapter on the ancient municipalities of France, and on their antagonism to the feudal system, deeply interesting as it is, touches on so many vexed questions in the history of that country, as hardly to admit of a satisfactory treatment in the space assigned to it by our author, still less in the

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