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feeling would wish otherwise or fail to think creditable to the earnest purpose of the contributors. And that certain opinions should be maintained, savouring sometimes too much of controversial divinity, though in some cases to be regretted, was perhaps beyond the power of the Editor to prevent, and is a pardonable blemish almost inseparable from the zeal which leads men to devote themselves to the advocacy of truth.

On the whole, we repeat emphatically the favourable verdict which we have already pronounced. We turn again and again to this Dictionary with interest, with confidence, with respectful admiration of the labour, the learning, the judgment, the conscientiousness, and we again add the courage it displays. Even where we differ from the writers we do so with respect. We see throughout a conscientious love of truth, and an intelligent and successful endeavour to collect and present to us correctly the facts on which they report. It is generally the bearing and mutual relation of these facts upon which we are at issue with them rather than on the facts themselves. They seem to us not seldom like surveyors who, after carefully and correctly taking the requisite observations with their sextants, should neglect or refuse to reduce the observed angles to the plane of the horizon. If we are right in this judgment, time will work the necessary change. We have no wish to precipitate it mischievously; though we wish to be prepared for what we ourselves foresee, and foresee for our own part without dread. Meanwhile we congratulate Dr. Smith on the success of his work. That it should satisfy everybody was of course impossible. That it should satisfy, and at the same time instruct and stimulate the great mass of educated thoughtful Biblical students in this country, was a success within the bounds of possibility. This success we can claim for Dr. Smith's Dictionary; and we must not complain that in order to achieve it the necessary conditions have been submitted to. To meet the requirements of the English mind, the nature of the English mind must be consulted. A graft will not grow unless homogeneous to the stock to which it is attached. We are far from thinking that this work deserves to be translated into all languages, and erected into the handbook of Christendom, or that it will, in its present form, meet the wants of our own countrymen for all time. But we hail it as a noble achievement of a band of Christian scholars, a work of eminent usefulness in the present generation, an effectual step in advance and a pregnant pledge of what may be realised hereafter.

ART. III.-Life of General Sir William Napier, K. C.B., Author of History of the Peninsular War,' &c. Edited by the Right Hon. H. A. BRUCE, M.P. London: 1864.

THE

HE historian of the Peninsular War, not the least distinguished member of a renowned and highly-gifted family, well deserved the honours of a biography, and we may add that he has been fortunate in the hands to which the delineation of his life and character is committed. The natural partiality of a son-in-law has not blinded the author of these volumes to those flaws and blemishes in a noble character, the omission of which would make the portrait of Sir William Napier a flattering deception; at the same time he has touched with a gentle and considerate hand on those passages in his career which his warmest admirers must contemplate with regret, and he has wisely refrained from espousing the prejudices and enmities into which a too impulsive nature was apt to hurry the subject of this memoir. Another commendable feature of the work is that the hero is made to a great extent his own biographer through his numerous letters, which not only afford the most authentic information as to the various passages of his life and the motives and feelings by which he was actuated, but illustrate a large diversity of topics of public interest and of controversies upon passing events in which his active intellect impelled him to take part. Interspersed with these are striking anecdotes and notices of eminent persons, with some of whom General Napier was connected by ties of cordial friendship, with others a too irritable spirit brought him at various times into unfriendly collision. Upon the whole, the biography is one which will possess, if we mistake not, a singular charm for a certain class of readers, especially for the young, to whom it may well furnish a keen incentive in antiquam virtutem animosque viriles,' and for the more ambitious and aspiring members of the military profession. It is well that the thoughts of young men should be raised by the study of high models of character, and assuredly that of Sir W. Napier, with all its imperfections, towered greatly above the level of ordinary beings.

At the same time it is an undoubted fact, and one which may possibly procure for these volumes a less favourable reception than they deserve, that there exists in many minds a strong distaste for that special phase of character which stamped the whole genus irritabile' of the Napiers. Granting to them the possession of high gifts and extraordinary energy, these qualities

were quite overshadowed, in the opinions of many, by certain repulsive features in the family portraiture. True, it is said, they were brave and chivalrous in spirit, lofty and disinterested in their views, devoted in their sense of duty, but were they not, at the same time, bitter and acrimonious in their tempers, arrogant in their self-assertion, fierce in their resentments, intolerant to all who presumed to question their merits or to differ from their judgment? Were they not almost disqualified for the exercise of power by their inordinate strength of will, their tendency to encroach upon the authority of others, to defy and denounce all who were not disposed to yield to their supremacy? Did not Sir Charles, after all his splendid victories in Scinde, make India, through his overbearing conduct, too hot to hold him? Did not Sir William outrage all propriety by his intemperate denunciation of men as brave and highminded as himself, because he unjustly deemed them to be his brother's enemies?

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It is painful to acknowledge that there is a foundation of truth in this impeachment, and that the lustre of high genius and of eminent public services may be tarnished, if not effaced in the estimation of some minds, by the frailties of an irascible temper or an ungoverned tongue. It was wisely said by a great man*, though himself not quite immaculate in this respect, that we must live at peace with our species, if not for their sakes, yet very much for our own.

The man,

however gifted and eminent he may be, who recklessly wounds the feelings and tramples on the self-love of others, commits suicide of his own fame. Had the temper of the conqueror of Scinde been equal to his genius for war or his capacity for government, to what heights of glory or of power might he not have attained? Could the chivalrous spirit and rarelyendowed intellect of the Peninsular historian have been combined with a calm, discreet, and conciliatory temperament, no man that ever lived would have gained a larger meed of affectionate admiration. But we have to deal with human beings, not with angels. We must take men as we find them in this world, a strange compound of good and evil. apparently not the order of Providence that all gifts, all attractions, all proprieties-the greater and the lesser virtues alikeshould ever meet in harmonious proportion in one perfectlyadjusted character. The biographies of all men, whose lives are worth writing, teem with instances of the infirmities of genius, the inconsistencies of goodness. The Napiers were no

*Edmund Burke.

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exception rather a striking illustration-of this rule. In proportion to the high stature of their intellectual and moral qualities was, alas! that undergrowth of besetting infirmities, those moral macule, which sully, though they cannot destroy, the splendour of great endowments and of noble deeds. But while we concede thus much, our admission must not be stretched beyond its limits. If we plead guilty in their name to much that was faulty in temper, in judgment, in propriety of act and language, from another and less excusable class of sins we claim on their behalf an absolute exemption. Nothing that was underhand, mean or sordid, no selfish aims, no bye-views of personal advantage, ever caused them to deflect one hair's-breadth from the strait path of probity and honour. Charles Napier, rejecting all the costly gifts which barbaric princes would have laid at his feet, could say with truth, Certainly I could have got 30,000l. since my coming to 'Scinde, but my hands do not want washing yet. Our dear father's sword which I wore in both battles (Meanee and Hyderabad) is unstained.' And with regard to him whose career is now before us, it may be left to any dispassionate reader of these volumes to judge, whether the instances which they exhibit of irritable temper, of violent judgment, or of reckless language, are not counterbalanced, aye, and doubly atoned for, by the countless proofs of an heroic soul-of a courage tested alike in facing danger and in enduring anguishof a more than womanly tenderness of affection-of a public spirit sometimes erring, yet ever pure-of a hatred of oppression which often misled, but never ceased to animate him-of an unflinching honesty and love of truth-of a spotless purity of personal conduct, and of an humble faith which sustained him to the last? If qualities such as these could not avail to procure for William Napier the favourable verdict of Englishmen, the country which he adorned would be unworthy of her noblest sons.

The family of five brothers, of whom the subject of this biography was the third, and of whom all were eminent for character or talent, came of a parentage which might well give promise of a distinguished offspring. The father, the Hon. George Napier, the sixth son of the fifth Lord Napier, was a man of no common stamp. Of remarkable personal beauty, activity, and strength, in moral qualities he appears to have been still more raised above the standard of his contemporaries. In an age of far less scrupulous political morality than our own, he maintained an uncompromising integrity in public life. In his office of superintendent of Woolwich Dockyard he intro

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duced, by means of his chemical knowledge, a valuable improvement in the manufacture of gunpowder. Subsequently, the appointment of Comptroller of Army Accounts was pressed upon him by Lord Cornwallis, then Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland. 'I want,' said the Viceroy, an honest man, and this is the only thing I have been able to wrest from the harpies around me.' Colonel Napier refused more than once the representation of his county (Kildare) in the Irish Parliament. The factions of that time were too violent and corrupt for a man of fastidious integrity to take part either with the oppressive depositaries of power or with their turbulent opponents. When the insurrection of 1798 broke out, and many families took refuge in Dublin, this gallant gentleman declined to do so. He fortified his house at Celbridge, near Castletown, armed his five sons, the subject of this memoir being then but twelve years old, and offered an asylum to all who were willing to resist the insurgents. The little garrison was afterwards removed to Castletown, and he, being invested with the command, constructed field-works, scoured the country with some of his sons by his side, and, while he repressed outrage, often interposed to protect the poor inhabitants from oppression by the ill-disciplined soldiers under his charge. Such was the father of the Napiers, a man to whose character and talents his more famous sons often referred in after days with unbounded admiration and reverence. His second wife, the mother of his sons, was the beautiful Sarah Lennox, daughter of the second Duke of Richmond, by Sarah, the daughter of Marlborough's famous lieutenant, Lord Cadogan. Her connexions were distinguished by more honours than those of birth. One of her sisters, married to the first Lord Holland, became the mother of Charles James Fox; another, who married the Duke of Leinster, was the mother of the ill-fated Lord Edward Fitzgerald. Of the features of Lady Sarah we have a charming representation from the pencil of Sir Joshua, and the tradition of her beauty is heightened by the circumstance that she captivated the youthful heart of George III., and had not the exigencies of State opposed his wish to make her his wife, she might have become the mother of kings. Her fate was a very different one; but, as it is natural to expect, the circumstances which threw a cloud over her first marriage are not recorded by her admiring descendants. As the wife of Colonel Napier her position was not brilliant, and after his somewhat premature death, poverty and eventual blindness saddened the close of her life, which was protracted to a very advanced age. But though poor in wealth, she was rich in treasures of another sort: the

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