zoological manuals. Mr. Dallas is evidently a careful and close observing naturalist, and his work is unquestionably one of the best popular descriptions of the animal kingdom which has appeared in our language. It is not an easy task to string together dry facts into a readable form; but Mr Dallas has succeeded in doing that well, which so many have either failed in doing, or have done so ill, as to call forth the following severe, but just remarks, from a competent judge:

Carefully excluding from their compilations all elevated and correct views of science, they have, by their anecdotic and quasi-popular style, contributed to debase the works of the most eminent zoologists, to such an extent that the grand labours of Buffon, the masterly researches of Cuvier, the profound views of Goethe, Oken, and Spix,

can scarcely be recognised. Their views are anti-scientific, anti-educational; calculated, if not devised, to retard the progress of the human mind.

With works of this class Mr. Dallas's book contrasts most satisfactorily. The engravings are judiciously chosen, but are not so well executed as those of the two previous works which we have been noticing. With the letterpress we can find no fault; the style is plain and unaffected, and the information is sound; besides which, this work presents us with the most recent and approved views of some of the more obscure points in zoology, and consequently shows, better than any other book of our acquaintance, the present state of zoological science.

THE close of the last year gave us another instalment of Mr. Macaulay's work. Long expected, almost despaired of, the two volumes conducted us by pleasant paths, bestrewn with flowers, and winding cheerfully and gracefully amidst enchanting scenes, to the resting place previously prepared for our repose. Satiated but not wearied, we surveyed the extent of our journey and felt, if not disappointed, yet amazed, at the little ground that we had travelled over. We had, in fact, been beguiled by the matchless spells of the mighty wizard who guided our willing steps.

This may be considered as an epoch in our literature. The fifth volume of Alison's history came out in the beginning of this year as a matter of course. If, in the former instance, we deemed our progress slow, when we regarded the extent of country that still lay before us, in this we feel that we have been hurried along with marvellous rapidity. The incidents of the principal states of Europe during considerable periods of the last thirtyseven years have been evolved in one volume. This rapidity is inseparable from the nature of the tasks which the author has undertaken to accomplish. We look to this volume by itself, without reference to those which have preceded it. It is obvious that it must touch the surface only of things in general; it cannot inquire, examine, and adjust. Like Camilla, "it scours the plain, flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main." Yet we must in justice say that the summary is very judiciously narrated; nor are there

Vol. V. Blackwood and Sons. 1856.

wanting, or, as our author writes, "awanting," many smart and pertinent remarks and just conclusions, indicating habits and powers of observation. It would be too much to say that we could not do without the book; that if it were not there would be a dreary void; that it has either enlarged the bounds or opened new sources of thought. It has no pretensions to such pre-eminence; but it is a very useful book of reference, saving the labour of turning over many volumes of the annual register, and of searching for facts in other contemporaneous works. To us, indeed, who date as far back as Temp. Georgii III., it has been a pleasing amusement to refresh our recollections of those great events, and of those mighty changes which Europe underwent after the fall of Napoleon; and again to renew our acquaintance with some of the more important actors in all those busy scenes. We by no means admit the infalli bility of this volume, but we have indisputable evidence that the author has not been careless in his researches, and we believe that he has sought for the truth, and has frequently found it.

Of the political and economical tendencies of the honourable Baronet every one is aware, and it must be allowed that he has ever advocated his doctrines with ability, and with a persevering energy that prove the honesty of his convictions. It is our misfortune, perhaps, to differ from him on many very important points of our national policy, and to deny the validity of his arguments, but we cannot

hesitate to declare that they have been put forth with the freedom and fairness of an accomplished gentleman. And after all how is any truth to be ascertained but by discussing all the points that bear upon it? And although the discovery of it, often delayed by party spirit, prejudice, and self-interest, may not be made in time to benefit the individual or the nation, yet it is never finally forgotten or lost, but remains as one more precious heirloom bequeathed to the use and benefit of posterity. If discussion be necessary in any particular truth in which our passions are not engaged, how much more necessary is it in cases in which the greatest interests of a nation are involved! We may boast as we will of our reason, but how many are there amongst us who look at a question from any other point of view than from that to which we have been accustomed! We forget that there is a gold as well as a silver side to the shield. Dark will that day be when the measures of any administration whatsoever shall be adopted without a full and searching examination.

The contents of this fifth volume of nearly 700 pages are clearly arranged. It contains seven chapters. The first comprises the events in Germany. The second is devoted to German literature. In the third and fourth the contemporaneous history of France is given. The fifth describes the internal history of Great Britain from the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832, to the fall of Earl Grey's administration in 1834. Turkey, Greece, Egypt, and the East, find their places in the sixth chapter, while France is again presented to us in the seventh and last. We shall to uch upon those parts which we think will be most interesting to our readers in the several chapters, beginning with Germany and German literature. What had been the situation of Germany for some years before the colossal power of Napoleon fell by the blows of a nation in arms? Prussia had been laid prostrate and compelled to submit to the unbridled will of her haughty Conqueror. Austria had suffered the greatest reverses, had been humbled, and saved from utter destruction only by a treaty of marriage. We need not speak of the other states. Discrowned kings and wandering princes had been succeeded by the creatures of Napoleon. Everywhere their principal fortresses were occupied by French troops; their soldiers formed a portion of that army which had subjected their fatherland; and the requisitions of money, provisions, and the materiel of war, everywhere inflicted and exacted with a rigour unparallelled in modern times, had exhausted the resources of every portion of the German Em

pire--and this empire ceased to exist. The great problem requiring immediate solution was how might Germany, composed of two large masses occupying the north and south, with small states clustering about them, become strong enough to secure its independence if again assailed by either of its powerful neighbours, France and Russia. This was effected by constituting a Diet, in which the votes were arranged so as to give a preponderance to the more important states. This Diet decided all matters relating to the general policy of the Federal States, coercing the refractory and bringing them, if necessary, by force into harmony with the majority. A large and complete army was formed by the contributions of each state in proportion to its population. Stringent resolutions forbade any one of the states from entering into alliances which should be injurious to any single state or to the general welfare. The seat of the Diet was fixed at Frankfort, indicating the fear that all Germany still felt of France. It seems strange that they had no dread of Russia-yet this power had been always pressing westward steadily and securely, and from her position was always able to threaten both Prussia and Austria. Such was Germany as viewed from the exterior; stronger than it had ever been by the cohesion of its masses, and filled with a population resolved never again to be subjected by a foreign enemy. Still, however, there were diverging interests. The geographical position, the soil and climate, the productions of agriculture and of manufactures, differed greatly in a country stretching from the Baltic to the Mediterranean, and from the Rhine to Poland. Each state had its own fiscal regulations, the result of which was materially to restrict the most vigorous efforts of commerce. This serious impediment to the development of the resources of this extensive territory was removed by the institution of the Zolverein,

Or union for the purpose of collecting import and export duties, on one uniform scale, for behoof of the parties forming part of the union, which has since contributed so much to the prosperity of Northern Germany, and augmented so largely the influence and consideration of Prussia, the acknowledged head of the confederacy, and by whose servants the various duties are collected.

It would have been well if other most important difficulties had been adjusted and grievances redressed which pressed heavily on the feelings of the German nation. The desire for free institutions was implanted in the hearts of the whole people, who looked upon the acquisition of them as the due reward of their successful exertions against the power of France But unhappily the ruling powers were afraid to

X

trust their subjects. Demands were made for representative government and for the freedom of the press, which were either evaded or refused. The Diet was soon used as an instrument of repression. It must be allowed that a wild spirit of democracy was excited which threatened to overthrow all legitimate authority. Secret societies were formed, the more dangerous from the very nature of the German mind. The murder of Kotzebue, suspected of being a Russian spy, was partly attributed to the agency of these societies.

This horrible deed, perpetrated in open day, was detrimental to the cause of freedom. The time too when it occurred, just after the murder of the Duc de Berri, the Cato street conspiracy, and the revolution of Riego in Spain, combined to render it still more alarming; and when we read that the mother of Charles Frederick Sand, the murderer, received in a few weeks more than four thousand letters of condolence, and that students of Heidelberg dipped their handkerchiefs in the blood of Sand, and that a society gave six louis for the chair in which he sat at his execution, we are not surprised that the whole of Europe dreaded organic changes which would throw more power into the hands of men who were evidently unfit to use it. We must pass over much interesting statistical information about CRIME, remarking briefly that the statement made in a former volume of the number of crimes against the person and property in Prussia, as compared with those committed in France, which had been impugned by many periodical publications, is sufficiently established by the authority of Malte Brun.

We must now ask our readers' attention to the chapter on the literature of Germany, in which the prose writers and poets are passed in review and ably criticised. We quote an observation in the outset of the notice of Goëthe which is well worthy of being recorded.

It is not given to any one mind, not even to that of Shakespeare or Goethe, to excel at once in every branch of literature; universality of fame is a proof of universality rather than perfection of genius. Every one finds something that gratifies his taste, or strikes his intellect; but none find their expectations entirely gratified, their aspirations with nothing left to conceive. Had Raphael given to the world the sunsets of Claude Lorraine, the rocks of Salvator Rosa, the battle-pieces of Lebrun, and the boors of Tenier, as well as his Holy Families, he would have been admired by a wider circle, but he would never, by common consent, have been placed at the head of the art of painting. Some part of one quality would have insinuated itself into the works produced by another; the vulgarity of Tenier's group, the luxuriance of Titian's figures, would have marred the chastity of his divine conceptions. The true mark of the highest class of genius is not universality of fame, but universal admiration by the few who can really appreciate its highest

works.

Goëthe of course occupies a prominent place on the list. This is not the place to enter on a disquisition of Goethe's merits as an author. No one who has not read his works could benefit by the few remarks that our space allows us to make, and they would be needless to others. We agree with the opinion given of the character of his writings, which, in spite of his great powers, afford unequivocal proofs that he was both selfish and sensual. In the introduction to the philosophical schools we meet with a remark made by Liebnitz when the realists referred to the maxims of the scholiasts, "Nihil est in intellectu, quod non ante fuerat in sensu," the Father of Teutonic philosophy made what is termed this sublime addition, "Nisi intellectus ipse." The remark is as sound as it is important, but hardly sublime. Whatever its character may be it reminds us strongly of the answer made to a zealous antiquarian pointing out to him a tumulus of the greatest antiquity, "Now, Sir, there is nothing older than this.' Except this ground, Sir." was the quiet answer. The causes of the dif ference between the poets, dramatists, and prose writers are acute and well founded, but we must refer our readers to the book itself. Strauss is noticed and condemned, but we do not agree with the opinion that his work is not likely to do mischief. The reasons given are to us most unsatisfactory, and in part unintelligible, but the passage is far too long to be quoted. Our belief is that the young, and the ignorant, and the weak in faith cannot escape from it without injury; while the sceptic and the infidel will find in it plausible arguments wherewith to assail others. We must find room for the closing reflections on Germany, long as it is.

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Lord Bacon says that felicities are the blessings of the Old Testament, and misfortunes of the New. Never was a more striking example of the truth of this profound observation afforded than in the intellectual resurrection of Germany during the last half-century. It is sometimes well for nations as well as individuals to be in affliction. Compare the selfishness and egotism, the e curtly corruption and popular indifference, the aristocratic pride and general submissiveness of the first part of this period, with the generous sacrifices and heroic struggles of the war of liberation, the intellectual activity, social amelioration, and vast stride in national energy, and in the development of the elements of future freedom which have succeeded it, and the immense impulse given to the German mind by the war of the French Revolution will at once appear. It is not in vain that their fields have been drenched with blood; that the chariot of Napoleon has rolled over their surface; that the iron of subjugation has entered their soul, its bitterness been brought home to every dwelling; with those mortifications the courage was strengthened which might redress, in that agony the spirit was inhaled which might overcome them. Periods of suffering are seldom in the end lost to the cause of humanity, or the moral discipline of nations; it is the

sunshine of prosperity which spreads the fatal corruption. The parallel bursts of Grecian genius after the Persian invasion; of Roman, with the civil wars of Cæsar and Pompey; in Italy, after the effort of the Crusades ; in England, with the Great Rebellion; in France, with the Revolution; in Germany, after the war of Liberation, prove that periods of national disaster form part of the general system of Divine administration, and are the great means by which individual selfishness is obliterated by common feeling, and energy called forth by the rude discipline of suffering.

We have dwelt perhaps rather longer than we ought on the portion of the volume that relates to Germany; our reason is that the internal history and policy of Germany are not so generally well known as those of France, or of any other single State of Europe. The importance of a close acquaintance with all that concerns Germany can hardly be overrated. Its position in the heart of Europe, its combination of states, its union of conflicting interests, make it eminently worth knowing intimately.

We now turn to France, to which three chapters are allotted, comprising the events from 1831 to 1837. Looking at the marginal references to the authorities quoted, we find, amongst others, Louis Blanc's history, our author's personal visits, and Blackwood's Magazine. This latter authority,

we think, will not have much influence with those who are readers of Black wood's Magazine. Does Sir Archibald Alison subscribe to the doctrine of duality in man? we invite attention to the opening passage of the 29th chapter.

By the suppression of the Hereditary Peerage, and vesting the choice of the members of the Upper House for life in the executive, the French Revolutionists had carried out their principles, which were less directed against the Crown than the aristocracy, and aimed rather at equality of political rights than the establishment of security from restraint or personal freedom. But by so doing they had immensely increased the power of the executive magistrate, by whatever name he might be called, because they had rendered all the authorities in the State dependent upon his appointment, and made the Tuileries the centre from which not only all the real power, but all the lucrative patronage of the Government was to flow. To a generation thirsting for pleasure and excitement, and tormented with artificial wants, which, save from government appointments, they had no means of gratifying, this circumstance before long gave an immense preponderance to the Crown.

We have seen Germany discordant, and struggling with internal and external foes; but what a picture have we of France during the first eight years of Louis Philippe's reign. Four parties, more worthy to be called factions, were at war with one anotherOrleanists, Legitimists, Napoleonists, and Republicans, strove for the mastery-within that time two bloody pitched battles were

fought in Paris, and as many at Lyons, in all of which Infantry and Artillery were unsparingly used, not reckoning insurrections in many other parts of France. The press lent its aid, alimenting the flames of discord. Secret societies, with extensive and active ramifications in every important town, were always busy in fomenting disorders. Assassins plied their trade. The troops were not always faithful to the sovereign, and the stage but too faithfully reflected a state of morals which had had no parallel since the early days of the Great Revolution. Surely the annals of no country can show such an assemblage of horrors in an equal space of time. We find the Citizen King seated on the throne, to which a successful revolution had conducted him. The constitution had been violated by the ministers of his predecessor; they had been legally found guilty and were expiating their offences in the Citadel of Ham. Their measures were universally condemned. Yet what ensues? Successive ministers of Louis Philippe were placed in such circumstances that they had no alternative but to adopt the same measures that the ministry of Polignac had pursued and, in many instances, to make them more stringent.

So truly do the phases of revolutions resemble each other that the pages of Thucydides will serve us now as well as they did Coleridge while editing the Morning Post. And what was the result of all these disastrous and costly revolutions? One revolution more-and what then? A fitful struggle for four years, during which there was neither peace nor prosperity, ending in a close run race between the President of the republic and the leaders of the opposing party, and the re-establishment of the dynasty of Napoleon. That we have not exaggerated the accounts will be seen by the following extract from Louis Blanc, whom our author calls "the able Republican and Socialist historian," a picture which he says is worthy to be placed beside that which Gibbon has drawn of the condition of the Eternal City when it was taken by the Goths.

"Never had society been abandoned to such disorders as those which now afflicted it under the direction of its official guides. There was an incessan strife of masters for the command of the market,-of workmen for the command of employment; of the masters against the workman for the fixing of his wages,-of the workman against the machine destined to destroy by superseding him; such was, under the name of free competition, the picture of the situation of France, viewed in an industrial aspect. What a picture of social disorder! The great capitalists gaining the victory in the strife, as the strong battalions in the field of battle, and the principle of

laissez faire leading to results as ruinous as the most odious monopolies; the great manufacturers ruining the small, and the great merchants the lesser; usury by de

reckoned upon it as a good nursery for the training of troops in the art of war, and he

worse than the old; the landed property burdened by debt to above a thousand millions (£40,000,000); independent artisans giving place to those who are mere serfs; capital ingulfing itself with shameless avidity in the most perilous undertakings; all interests armed, the one against the other! The proprietor of vines at open war with the proprietor of woods; the raisers of sugar with the raisers of beetroot; the colonies, the seaport towns, with the manufacturers in the interior; the provinces of the north against the provinces of the south; Bordeaux against Paris; here markets overflowing to the despair of the capitalists, there workshops shut to the despair of the workmen; commerce turned into a struggle of legalised frauds and understood falsehood; the nation advancing to the reconstruction of feudality, by usury of a financial oligarchy, by credit; the discoveries of science turned only into instruments of oppression; the conquests of genius over nature into arms for the conflict; tyranny multiplied in some degree by the very magnitudeof progress!"

He

It is admitted, however, that these miseries were not altogether the consequences of the revolutions; that they were greatly increased by them is certain. We cannot pretend to give a connected narrative of this distracted reign, we can do nothing more than notice some of the more remarkable events. Our author is very severe against the policy which dictated the siege of Antwerp; he looks on it as a suicidal policy on the part of England, who thus placed the great stronghold of the North in the hands of a power which cannot maintain it if France should covet Belgium. looks back to the time when Napoleon made it his rallying place for the annoyance of England by its docks and basins, rendering it impregnable at least by sea. He complains that we have virtually subjected it to the tricolor flag, and he reiterates this complaint. This marvel he attributes to "the revolution of July in France, and to the Reform Bill in England!" appending a note of admiration to England which we copy. The episode of the Duchess of Berri is given at great length. The occupation of Ancona by the French troops is an important portion of foreign policy, the germ of the occupation of Rome at a later period. The abortive attempt at Strasburgh is detailed, and the humane conduct of the King towards Louis Napoleon is mentioned, as it deserves to be, with much approbation A good space is given to the affairs of Algeria, and to the vicissitudes of the French arms in the establishment of that colony, which the sagacity of Louis Philippe preserved from being abandoned, even by his own ministers. He foresaw the importance of it to France as a place of strength for her on the opposite shores of the Mediterranean, a sort of counterpoise against Malta. He

let for those turbulent and restless spirits which so continually disquieted France. The result has justified all his expectations; as a statesman, sui generis, Louis Philippe was superior to any man of his time in France. We close our notice of this part of the work with a sketch of the present Emperor, during his sojourn in this country in 1837. The blanks are easily filled up.

The idea of a destiny, and his having a mission to perform, was throughout a fixed one in Louis Napoleon's mind. No disasters shook his confidence in his star, or his belief in the ultimate fulfilment of his destiny. This is well known to all who were intimate with him in this country after he returned from America in 1837. Among other noble houses the hospitality of which he shared was that of the Duke of Montrose at Buchanan, near Lochlomond. and the Duke of Hamilton at Brodick Castle, in the island of Arran. His manner in both was in general grave and taciturn; he was wrapt in the contemplation of the future, and indifferent to the present. In 1839, the present Earl of W- then Lord Bcame to visit the Author, after having been some days with Louis Napoleon at Buchanan House. One of the first things he said was, "Only think of that young man Louis Napoleon: nothing can persuade him he is not to be Emperor of France: the Strasburg affair has not in the least shaken him; he is thinking constantly of what he - also is to do when on the Throne." The Duke of Nsaid to the author in 1854: "Several years ago, before the Revolution of 1848. I met Louis Napoleon often at Brodick Castle in Arran. We frequently went out to shoot together; neither cared much for the sport, and we soon sat down on a heathery brow of Goatfell, and began to speak seriously. He always opened these conferences by discoursing on what he would do when he was Emperor of France. Among other things, he said he would obtain a grant from the Chambers to drain the marshes of the Bries, which, you know, once fully cultivated, became flooded when the inhabitants, who were chiefly Protestants, left the country on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; and what is very curious, I see in the newspapers of the day that he has got a grant of two millions of francs from the Chambers to begin the draining of these very marshes." All that belongs to Louis Napoleon is now public property, and these noble persons will forgive the author if he endeavours to rescue from oblivion anecdotes so eminently illustrative of the fixity of purpose which is the most remarkable feature in that very eminent man's character.

Of

Turn we now to the 32nd chap., in which the affairs of Turkey, Greece, Egypt. and the East, from 1828 to 1841 are narrated. all that passes under our very eyes how little do we really know! How strikingly are the ways of Providence displayed by these proofs of our ignorance! Had the state of the army of Diebitch been ascertained the terms of the treaty of Adrianople would have been different. That treaty injured Turkey more effectually than the loss of armies and navies. The Russians were held to be invincible: the moral influence of the Turks was so