ences, which demanded rather precision and | shrink from the risk of enthusiasm; which neatness than brilliancy and power. has made us the most universal, if not the No; this terseness is the offspring of the most accurate of critics, and the lengthiest, French genius. We see it even in the if not the most brilliant of essayists. It is, French character. Take a savant from the perhaps, this too which has made all our Institute, greyheaded, full of learning, full historians, except those two-Hume and of vanity, full of a well-disguised hatred of Gibbon, who were more than half French in his brother savant, and glorying in that bit style-discourse on history rather than narof blue or yellow ribbon in his button-hole, rate it. which tells that even foreign monarchs have Lastly, the French are philosophical, we appreciated his talents; watch the anxiety religious. The quick invention and rapid with which he ties the bows of those sleek perception of the Frenchman makes him pumps, and arranges the négligé of those seize on a theory and neatly develop it, with scientific locks of iron-grey; watch the eager every possible illustration, long before he flashing of his eyes, and the self-contented has examined the first causes, or tested its curl of his little mouth, as he pours bright truth. He is epigrammatic, while we are conceits into the ears of Madame la Duch- expansive; he proverbial, and we sentenesse; and tell me if he is a whit less French, tious; he philosophizes on the characterisfor all his learning, than the gay young Pa- tics of man, we moralize; he refers everyrisian, neatly gloved and booted, who is thing to the standard of right reason, we to driving a pair of whole-blood horses in the religion. The Frenchman never proses. Bois de Boulogne? Are not both fonder of Whether in history, description, biography, display than worth, of the surface than of or fiction, he leaves it to the reader to draw depth, of brilliancy and a pleasing effect what inferences or make what reflection he than of accuracy and solidity? Both think pleases. He himself is more than satisfied and speak well, as all Frenchmen do; but it is inventively, not reflectively, and hence their terseness.

with a short neat moral, which is often trite, but always apposite. The Englishman on the other hand, is dogmatical. You must not only have his version of the affair, but you must also have his opinions upon it. He is not content to give you truth; he must guarantee, illustrate, and countersign it, before he allows you to dismiss it.

It is the activity of the French mind that makes them dramatic. It is by our reflection that we excel in the essay. They are impatient and rapid; we are sober and solid. Their mirth is light and even childish; ours is sarcastic, humorous, and dignified enough But it would be tedious to go through the for a bench of big-wigs. A Frenchman whole list of differences, and as, of course, talking to an Englishman reminds us always one Englishman can always beat seven of a jester to his monarch. Again: there is Frenchmen, we have no doubt that many of in the English character a certain self-con- our readers consider it quite derogatory to sciousness. We are prone to criticise and compare the two at all. We humbly beg satirise, and we fear nothing so much as the their pardons, and will pass on to a concritic and the satirist. We write in hand-sideration of those numerous British advancuffs, that we have ourselves put on. tages which ought to, and do, make us thankThe greatest difference of all perhaps, be-ful that we were born within the realmstween our national geniuses is our love of irrespective of income-tax-of her Most truth, and the French disregard of it, which Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria. makes us practical-them theoretical. It is To begin, then, with history and histothis that makes us redundant. We English rians. There is as much difference between must not be mistaken, and we doubt if we history and the philosophy of history as beshall be believed; hence we explain all our meaning fully, and repeat our idea in a hundred different forms, that others may be impressed with it. We are slow in apprehension, and write as if our readers were even more so. It is this love of truth, admirable in itself, which makes even our humour heavy and serious, and our satire cool, careful, and bilious. It is this again which makes us so impatient of ellipsis, that in translating Aristotle or Tacitus we must fill up the slightest lacunes with whole sentences of explanation. This it is which makes us dread the expression of passion, and

tween geography and physical geography. The one is a practical study; the other a speculative science. The historian fulfils a duty to society, and patiently labours in the cause of truth. The philosopher is naturally an egotist, for he exalts his own theories. The historian is therefore none the worse for not being a philosopher, although people will cite Hume, Gibbon, Hallam, Macaulay, and some others of less note as philosopherhistorians. Hume was indeed a philosopher, but he was also, and separately, an historian, and had the taste not to mingle the two so as to spoil either. If Gibbon was a philo

sopher, it was malgré lui. All his tastes to fact, until a pause is wanted for relief, were for history, and the other was a mere when he gives us a paragraph of neat and accessory. The rest are neither pure his- sufficient reflection. His terseness consists torians nor pure philosophers, but philoso- in an absence of absolute or qualifying phraphical historians. On the opposite side, we ses, rather than in the curt appropriate terms can array all the best historians, ancient and which are the signet of Gibbon's. He is modern-Thucydides, Sallust, Livy, Tacitus, pure, free from affectation of any kind, suffiThiers, Guizot, Lamartine, Robertson, and cient, but never redundant, and plain almost Thirlwall, to say nothing of Niebuhr, be- to a fault. He is devoid of all metaphor, cause we purposely leave the Germans out bloom, or simile, as if he had been guided in of the question. Besides, the two things history only by Bacon's rule. But most are quite independent of one another. Gib- worth notice is the independence of each sebon was a soldier for a time, and tells us it veral sentence, which can almost always be served him a good turn in writing his His- understood without the context. Yet so tory. But should we on that account send well is the narrative kept up, that the sepaoff all our present and future historians to rate pearls form one continuous chain, interIndia or the Crimea ? rupted, like a rosary, only by the larger beads which commence a fresh paragraph. His great fault that of all our good histo rians (who were mostly Scotchmen)—is coldness.

Again: historians must not be poets. Imagination, passion, and affection war with cool truth. If Lamartine and Goethe are exceptions, it is because they are men of thorough judgment; while Mr. Macaulay must be proved to be a poet, before he can trouble our theory.

Gibbon is not only terse and antithetical, but also flowing. Each sentence is self-sufficient. There are no conjunctive sentences; nothing But above all, historians must not be es- inserted to fill up. Yet all harmonizes, is sayists. We do not want opinions in his- consistent, and consequent. Moreover, he tory, we want facts, and those facts given rises at times. He can be grand and powerin a manner which shall best aid us in form-ful when he needs it; but he has no tendering our own opinions. We do not deny ness,-none of that touching description that many or most historians have been es- which makes Livy so readable,-little of sayists, but the good essayists make bad that beauty which makes Lamartine so dehistorians, and vice versa. Besides, many lightful. The only passion he indulges freely historians have weighed eighteen stone. Is is indignation. it, therefore, an advantage to all historians to be in condition? But the historian may be a novelist, without his imagination, and a traveller without his tales. He wants the descriptive power and perception of character possessed by the one, and the topographical knowledge of the other. Besides these, he wants a cool heart, free from pre- Mr. Hallam has the honour of having judice and impartiality, ambitious of truth commenced the School of Philosophical Hisalone, a sound judgment, a clear narrative tory. His "Middle Ages" and "Constitustyle, much taste, and sufficient enthusiasm tional History" are powerful, profound, and to be warm when requisite. Yet the his- valuable essays, where the historical facts torian is more than the chronicler, because are introduced, less as a narrative, than as he is the critic of his own authorities, and illustrations and confirmations of his philowill rather give you the results of his re-sophy. His minute detail is fatiguing, while searches, than relate how he carried them

out.

Terseness and variety are the best points in his style, if we judge from that of the most successful historians of the world. But it would be out of date at the present day to say much about the styles of Gibbon and Hume, if it were not for the sake of comparing the present school with them.

"Discretion of speech is more than eloquence," says Bacon; and it would seem as if Hume and Gibbon had countersigned the truth. The style of Hume is strictly historical. He passes uninterruptedly from fact

Taking popularity as the test of worthwhere time is wanting to test the popularity itself-there are few modern historians who come near to these two men. It may be said of them all, without exception, that they are better essayists than historians, as far, of course, as style, not matter, is concerned.

his warmth and imagination are out of place. His language is more Latin than Saxon, and is often careless-e.g., "The German empire had now assumed so peculiar a character, and the mass of states who composed it were," &c.

Sir James Mackintosh is a brillant, because a philosophical writer; but he is glaringly guilty of the English vice of redundancy. Perhaps, in him, we should rather call it "massing." He heaps epithets and synonymes together, and piles sentence upon sentence, in a manner which would make him heavy, if he were not naturally graceful.

But his periods weary at length, and we sigh sinks. There is no relief, no decrescendo. for a little simplicity, and still more for a While history is didactic to Gibbon, Malittle Saxon purity.

caulay is for ever seeking a primary cause for every fact. The one argues from facts to moral principles, the other from given principles to facts. For the rest, his style is terse, powerful, elegant and pure. But Gibbon excels in the sentence, Macaulay only in the paragraph.

Mitford and Grote are terrible instances of the wickedness of philosophical history. Here are two gentleman, who sit down with principles-the one Tory, the other Radical -firmly fixed in their minds, and pour them not into their histories only, but even into their very research. The art of concealing We come to the last, but by no means the or magnifying the importance of facts is here least of the modern historians. Sir Archibrought to perfection, and the result is that bald Alison was content to copy none but you have two histories of Grece, composed Jove himself, and assuming the form of from the same materials, and with equal di- John Bull, has triumphantly carried off Euligence, which differ as much as any two ropa herself on his back. The theme was Whig and Tory election addresses possibly large, the scheme courageous, but there we could do. regret to say the merit ceases. John Bull,

But while we are inclined by party-spirit such as we are told to know him by the to believe all Grote says, and receive only, newspapers, is no historian; and when Sir cum grano, the expositions of his opponent, Archibald Alison arrayed himself in all the we regret that our candidate has so out-Gre- commonplaceness of the press, all the trite cianized the Greeks, that it is quite uncom- second-hand articles of Grub Street, he ran fortable to be with him. He is not content the risk of appearing before the public in a with substituting words of classic extraction false character. Preferring quantity to quafor the commonest Saxon terms, and with lity, Sir Archibald evidently expects in his talking of autonomous and circumstantiality; readers as long a mental wind as he has but must needs adopt the Greek, or, we himself. After fourteen thick volumes, all should be more correct in saying, the Ger- in the same style, he gives us one exhausting man, mode of spelling Greek words. To sentence, that we copy out as a specimen of this the only objection would be that of puz- the whole. "Distrusting all plans of social zling his readers; but he has not stopped improvement which are not based on indivihere. He is not even consistent in his own dual reformation, recognising no hope for policy, and next to Kaos Krios, Asklepius, man but in the subjugation of the wicked and Kallisto, we find the common forms Oceanus and Cyclops. At any rate, if Orthros stands on one page, he should not admit Orthrus on another.

propensities of the human heart, acknowledging the necessity of Divine assistance in that Herculean task,-the reflecting observer will not, even amidst the greatest evils arisAlison says not amiss of Macaulay, that ing from general impiety-despair of the "he is more a brilliant barrister than an fortunes of the species." What strain, what upright judge." The fact is, that he is a effort, what forcing, with five present-partimost successful essayist, and his fame would ciples, the absurdity of recognising a hope, to probably have been as great, and certainly say nothing of the contradiction of entertainpurer, if he had never written a line of his- ing no hope for man save under impossible tory. All this is owing to his style. He circumstances, and yet not despairing of the is one of the few men who has assumed the fortunes of the species!

proper position for a reviewer. He has Sir Archibald has had a great field to taken high, commanding ground, and when work upon, and has not manured it. A he stoops it is rather for downright censure hundred opportunities occur, where other than polite satire. He is grand, noble, and historians have been sparkling or powerful, lofty. He has all the beauties that poetry and he only insipid and commonplace. But can give to prose, without being a real poet it must be admitted that, however little his in his poetry. But this very loftiness, and style may be suited to history, it is by no these beauties, unfit him for a historian. He means objectionable in the essay. It is true rises in the very outset. That he is con- that his criticism ever lacks originality, and scious of doing so, is evident from the ego- that he is content to dish up the trite mots tism with which he ushers in his work. "Iof the clubs or the papers with respectable purpose to write the History of England," diction, but it is something that that diction. he begins, and the three succeeding sentences is respectable; and it is to his praise, that begin with the same pompous "I." This is having adopted Blair's notion of criticism, all very well; but this loftiness soon fa- however erroneous it may be, he has given. tigues. It is too brilliant, too strained for greater weight to the beauties than to the common narrative, and to this he never blemishes of his authors.

The two extremes of French historical only religion. It is this which makes him style at the present day, are Guizot and La- one-sided, even in ancient history, where martine. Guizot is somewhat English in party-spirit could have little influence on history, Lamartine in poetry and fiction. him; this which fills even our lightest liteThiers, French to the core, seems to stand rature with trite religious reflections, which between the two. M. Guizot is a good nar- makes us sarcastic, but seldom abusive; rator, flowing, easy, and clear, but calm and bilious, but rarely furious. cold. He has no powers of description, no imagination, and little beauty. He is a pendant to Hume, for his style is English, lacking the point and terseness of his country, but his thinking is French. Thiers is fervent, enthusiastic, eloquent; with grand, systema tic French theory, and broad, decisive French style.

We, Lowlanders, outdo even Englishmen in this peculiarity. Foreigners tell us that our conversation on any serious topic seems to be a succession of downright challenges. We are never satisfied that our neighbour does agree with us, we are always confident that he must entertain a different opinion, and "we'll just trouble him to speak out."

If Macaulay is the philosopher, Lamartine The end of it all is, that we must have an is the poet of history. His style is curt, outlet. This we have sought and found in nervous, and concise, almost to being cate- many different quarters. We never heard, gorical. He never repeats. He seizes the for instance, of a debating society in any romantic and picturesque at once, and sup- foreign university, even under the most libplants abstract narration by concrete de- eral governments: and, during a long resiscription. His histories are dramas from dence in France, we never knew a single beginning to end, with their hero or heroine dinner-table in ordinary society, at which stanting out in bold relief, and dramas full criticism of the new books formed the staple of pathos, full of colour, warmth, and beauty, conversation, as it so often does in England. full to overflowing of a lofty enthusiasm. It is true that the stage, and the new actors His metaphor too is powerful, philosophical, and actresses, appear to take the place of and apt. Describing the character of Napoleon the Great, he calls him "an offspring of the sun, of the sea, and of the battle-field." He is the only instance of a good poet succeeding-and that too poetically-in history; and may be said to have struck out a new style of historical writing, which few will follow up, because very few have his wonderful powers.

literature with the French in this respect; but it has always struck us that their remarks on this subject were less a criticism of the piece or the art, than a conversation on the talents and character of the artist.

But the path in which the English most delight to vent their opinions is evidently the critical essay. We do not, of course, speak of all essays. The mere form of an No class of literature belongs more pecu- essay is the most convenient for several liarly to modern ages and our Northern subjects, and for none more than for philoIslands than the essay-nay, if we examine sophy; so much so that the works of many the matter very closely we may say that it ancient and most modern philosophers may is indigenous to England and Scotland only; be said to have been written in essays, or and that the Irish, like the French and Ger- rather treatises, which, taken together, exmans, have followed us in adopting it, but haust the whole subject, but have little conhave never succeeded. The fact is, that the secutive connexion with one another. If English and Lowland Scotch have an essentially Saxon characteristic, which not another people under the sun-except, perhaps, their American grandsons, possess the love of individual opinion. It is a part of their love of general independence. In France a man's opinions are those of his party, or, if he is utterly indifferent to politics, those of his class. In Germany a man frames his whole mind according to the popular theory he espouses. England is the only country where men of the same church, the same party, and the same predilections can afford or dare to think differently on the most important points. The opinion of the Englishman is dearer to him than his wife or friend. It is sacred. It is his religion, in fact, and we regret to say, with too many of us, his

these be called essays, the long essay may be said to have been in vogue much longer than is generally admitted. On the other hand, the short essay, in which the method was simply to propound and answer a hypothesis, and proceed to illustrate the solution by instances, or explanation, was used many centuries back by clever or learned men as a vehicle for their undeveloped opinions on various topics, whether high or low, as Bacon discoursed on gardens, buildings, and plantations, with the same tone and genius with which he treated truth, honour, and ambition, a few pages back.

But we do not mean in using the term critical essay to limit its theme to literature. On the contrary, it may be taken to embrace every essay which is critical, what

ever its subject be-books, politics, social the critic can only be to establish a preethics, national characteristics, or, in fact, cedent by which future critics and a future any such topic of the day; provided only public may be guided; all that he is at the essayist sits on the judge's bench, and present concerned to do, is to sum up the not in the chair of the teacher merely. evidence, to point out the law, to guide the With this view of the critical essay, we may taste of the public, and to leave it to their include the writers of Queen Anne's and common sense to give the verdict. That the early Georges' reigns in the same list verdict has been given and still is given in that holds Jeffrey, Smith, Cockburn, Brough- every case with or without the aid of a ream, Wilson, and Carlyle. But the mission viewer, and though no jury is infallible, the of the one differed from that of the other, in common-sense judgment of the public will the ratio of their times. The practical ex- scarcely err once in a thousand times. Nor travagancies of 1710 were theoretical in can all the charging, and blustering, and 1810. A hundred years had sufficed to bullying of the reviewer divert that judg take the baton of influence from fashion and ment from its proper channel. Neither rank, and place it in the hands of intellect. Keats, Byron, nor Barry Cornwall have suf The humour that Addison justly whetted fered as writers from the blows of their against the absurdities of opera, club, rout, critics. As' men they may have suffered and so forth, was replaced by the satire either in health or temper, but that was which Jeffrey levelled at the trivialities of their own fault. But though public opinion petty poets. Again, the task of those was far easier than the labour of these. If Addison ridiculed fashionable vices, he was certain that he was in the right. The laws of social ethics are definite and acknowledged; but those of literary tastes still want a general council to decide them, and the reviewer of to-day is as much open to review, and the critic to criticism, as the author they

handle.

always decides well sooner or later, its verdict is generally a long time in the finding, where there is anything to be said in extenuation of the prisoner. The public must be locked up for years before it becomes unanimous. But time gives the conquest to the majority. There can be only one opinion now about the merits of Shakspere, Marlowe, Vanbrugh, or Massinger, though there are two and more about those of Wordsworth, Southey, and-Hannah More. So, then, in this age of books, when a rapid decision is absolutely necessary, it is the critic's office to take the onus off the public shoulders, and point out the decision which they ought to come to.

It was not until the establishment of Sydney Smith's "Edinburgh," in the beginning of this century, that the reviewer's position began to be understood, for the criticism of the last was directed not by taste, education, and a long literary experience, so much as by those pretended laws of criticism which It is this necessity for rapid critiques that everybody disputed, and none but profes- has completely altered the character of our sional critics could defend. It was quite three-monthly reviews within the last fifteen natural then—indeed it could not be other- years. No longer able to aid or guide the wise that the short should extend into a public in their judgment, as the new books long essay, for the reviewer, while passing are read and thrown aside before the quarhis examination had, and still has, to defend terlies are even in print, they have left that his own views, and his method of bringing office to the weekly and even daily papers, them forward. But it was long before this and exchanged the critique for the essay. necessity was felt, and Smith himself clung The ponderous volumes which once rejoiced for at least the first two years to the old in fifteen or twenty brilliant, short and pithy school of short brilliant condemnation. In articles, now groan beneath the burden of the first number, for instance, he wrote no some seven or eight heavy and laboured less than seven critiques, besides editing the treatises; critiques on single works are whole, five in the third number, and so on. supplanted by reviews on a whole class of The principle by which our first and best literature, headed by a list of volumes, fit Reviewers were guided, judex damnatur si to throw a nervous reader into hysterics, nocens absolvitur, is a right one only when and the volume in the blue or the white cover, the judex is taken in the English sense of a which was so anxiously awaited towards the judge with a jury. The critic has no right end of December, March, June, or Septemto condemn, because he has no power to ber, that was discussed in every club, drawpunish. When the Quarterly extols what ing room, and railway-carriage in the kingthe Edinburgh runs down, or vice versa, all dom, now lies upon the table uncut for days, critisism sinks into nothing more than and producing a feeling of terrible nausea in party-spirit, and becomes not only useless, the man of the world, who knows that etibut absurd. But the highest ambition of quette obliges him to wade through its