difficulties of a negociator, who has to con- might be gained in accuracy by nearness of clude an inglorious though indispensable position, is liable to be lost in the partiality treaty, are feelingly described, as well as which that very position induces. The true the too natural, though hard fate of a minis-point of vision is attained, when the eye and ter, who is driven to such an unfortunate the object are placed at their due distance. measure as that of being considered as the The reader who comes to the perusal of the instrument of dishonour to his country. His work, in a more unimpassioned frame than pious recognition of God, as the supreme perhaps, the author wrote, will best collect disposer of events, is worthy of great praise. the characters, from the narrative, if fairly The copious and fluent BURNET, whose given, diffuse, but interesting history of his own Care should be taken not to extol shining times, informs and pleases; though the loose characters in the gross, but to point out their texture of his slovenly narration would not weaknesses and errors; nor should the brilnow be tolerated in a newspaper; who saw a liant qualities of illustrious men be suffered great deal, and wishes to have it thought that to cast a veil over their vices, or so to fashe saw every thing; whose egotism we for- cinate the young reader, as to excite admigive for the sake of his frankness, and whose ration of their very faults. Even in perusing minuteness, for the sake of his accuracy; sacred history, we should never extenuate, who, if ever he exceeds, it is always on the much less justify, the errors of great characside of liberty and toleration; an excess safe ters, but make them, at once, a ground for enough when the writer is soundly loyal, and establishing the doctrine of general corrupunquestionably pious; and more especially tion, and for quickening our own vigilance. safe when the reader is a prince. LADY The weakness of the wisest, and the errors RUSSEL, worthy of being the daughter of of the best, while they should be regarded the virtuous Southampton; too fatally con- with candour, must not be held up to imitanected with the unhappy politics of the tion. It has been reasonably conjectured, times; whose life was a practical illustra- that many acts of cruelty in Alexander, tion of her faith in the divine support, and of whose disposition was naturally merciful, submission to the divine will; and whose were not a little owing to one of his precepletters, by their sound and sober piety, strong sense, and useful information, eclipse all those of her learned and distinguished correspondents,

CHAP. X.

tors having been early accustomed to call himself Phoenix, and his pupil Achilles; and thus to have habitually trained him to an imitation even of the vices of this ferocious hero

A prince must not study history merely to store his memory with amusing narratives or insulated events, but with a view to Reflections on History—Ancient Historians. trace the dependence of one event upon anIF, however, the historian be a compatriot, other. A common reader will be satisfied and especially if he be a contemporary, with knowing the exploits of Scipio or Haneven though he was no actor in the drama, nibal, and will be sufficiently entertained it is difficult for him not to range himself too with the description of the riches or beauty uniformly on one side or the other. The of such renowned cities as Carthage or human mind has a strong natural bias to Rome; but a prince (who is also a politician) adopt exclusive attachment. Perhaps man studies history, in order to observe how ammay be defined to be an animal that delights|bition, operating on the breasts of two rival in party. Yet we are inclined to believe states, led to one war after another between that an historian, though he may be partial these two states. By what steps the ruin of and interested, yet, if he be keen-sighted the one, and the triumph of the other, were and intelligent as to the facts of which he hastened or delayed; by what indications speaks, is, on the whole, a better witness the final catastrophe might have been antethan a more fair and candid, but worse in- cedently known, or by what measures it formed man; because we may more easily might have been averted. He is interested calculate the degree of allowance to be made not merely when a single event arises, but for partiality and prejudice, than we can by the whole skill of the game; and he is on estimate that which is to be made for defect this account, anxious to possess many in of information. Of two evils, therefore, we ferior circumstances, serving to unite one should prefer a prejudiced, but well inform- event with another, which, to the ordinary ed, to a more impartial, but less enlightened

narrator.

reader, appear insignificant and dull. Again, in the case of Pompy and Cæsar, the reflectWhen materials are fresh, they are more ing politician connects the triumphs of the likely to be authentic; but, unfortunately, latter with the political moral state of Rome. when it is more easy to obtain, it is often less He bears in mind the luxurious habits of safe to employ them. When the events are the patricians, who became the officers in more remote, their authenticity is more Pompey's army; the gradual decay of public difficult to ascertain; and, when they are spirit, the licentiousness and venality of the near, the passions which they excite are capital, and the arts by which Cesar had more apt to warp the truth. Thus, what prepared his troops, while they were in VOL. II.

5

Gaul, for the contention which he already rant must not, however, be confounded with meditated for the empire of the world. He the malevolent declaimer against royalty. will, in idea, see that world already van-But, though the most arbitrary prince canquished, when he considers the profound not prevent his own posthumous disgrace, policy of this conqueror, who on being ap-yet an honest and conscientious historian pointed to the government of Gaul on both will remember, that, while he is detailing sides the Alps, by exciting the Gauls to the vices of a king, which it is his duty to solicit the same privileges with the Italians, enumerate, it is his duty also carefully to opened to himself this double advantage :- avoid bringing the office of the king into the disturbance which this would occasion in contempt. And, while he is exposing the Rome, would lift him into absolute power; individual crime, he should never lose sight while, by his kindness and protection to of his respect for the authority and station these people, he gained an accession of of him whose actions truth compels him to strength to overthrow his competitor. The record in their real characters. The conordinary reader is satisfied with the battle of trary insidious practice has of late so much Pharsalia for the entertainment it affords, and prevailed, that the young reader should be admires the splendour of the triumphs, with- put on his guard not to suffer his principles out considering these things as links that con- to be undermined by the affectation of indignect the events which are past with those nant virtue, mock patriotism, zeal for spuwhich are to come. rious liberty, and factitious morality. It is The preceptor of the royal pupil will, but justice to Mr. Hume, against whose probably, think it advisable to select for her principles we have thought it a duty to bear perusal some of the lives of Plutarch. This our most decided testimony, to allow that, author teaches two things excellently, anti-in the earlier periods of English history, he quity and human nature. He would deserve carefully abstains from the vulgar error of admiration, were it only for that magazine always ascribing the public calamity, which of wisdom, condensed in the excellent say- he is relating, to the ambition or injustice of ings of so many great men, which he has re-kings; but often attributes it, where it is corded. Perhaps, all the historians together often more justly due, to the insolence and have not transmitted to us so many of the oppression of the barons, or the turbulence sage axioms and bon mots of ancient Greece and insubordination of the people. If he and Rome. Yet, in his parallels-if that errs, it is on the contrary side. can be called a parallel which brings together two men which have commonly little or no resemblance, even the upright Plutarch exhibits something too much of the partiality lately noticed; the scale, whenever he weighs one of his own countrymen against a Roman, almost invariably inclining to the Greek side.

But let those licentious anarchists, who delight to retail insipid jests, or to publish unqualified libels on kings as kings, cast their eyes on an uninterrupted succession of five illustrious Roman emperors, who, though not exempt from faults, some of them from vices, chiefly attributable to paganism, yet exhibit such an unbroken continuity of great qualities, as it would, perhaps, be difficult to find in any private family for five successive generations.

It may also be deemed useful to read to her a few select portions of Suetonius. Though he is an author utterly unfit to be put into youthful, and especially, into female The candour of our excellent queen hands, yet a judicious instructor may select Mary, † towards the biographers of princes, passages particularly appropriated to a royal was exemplary. When, with an intention pupil. In truth, the writings of the ancient probably to sooth the royal ear, some perauthors of all classes, historians, satirists, sons, in her presence, severely condemned poets, and even moralists, are liable to the certain historians who had made reflections same objection, whether it be Suetonius, or dishonourable to the memory of princes, she Plutarch, or Juvenal, or even the compara- observed that if the princes had given just tively decorous Virgil, that we take in hand; ground for censure, the authors had done the perusal cannot fail to suggest to every well to represent them fairly; and that other considerate, and especially to every female sovereigns must expect to be dealt with in reader, the obligations which we owe to the same manner, if they gave the same Christianity, independently of its higher cause. She had even the magnanimity to ends, for having so raised the standard of wish, that all such princes would read Promorals and of manners, as to have rendered copius, (an author too much addicted to almost too monstrous for belief, and too blacken the memory of kings,) because,' shocking for relation, in our days, the fami- she observed, however he might have exliar and uncensured incidents of ancient aggerated the vices he described, it would times. Suetonius paints with uncommon be a salutary lesson to future princes, that force, though too often with offensive gross- they themselves must expect the same treatness, the crimes of the emperors, with their ment, when all restraint was taken off, and subsequent miseries and punishments. Ty- the dread of their power terminated with rants will always detest history, and, of all their lives.' historians, they will detest Suetonius.

An authentic historian of a deceased ty

• In chap. xi. + In chap. viii.

The late king of Prussia, who united the by exhibiting passions as well as actions; character of an author to that of a warrior, and what best indicates the hand of a maswas of another way of thinking. He was of ter, we hang suspended on the event of his opinion, that the names of good princes narrative, as if it were a fiction, of which alone should be recorded in history; and the catastrophe is in the power of the writhat those of the wicked should be suffered ter, rather than a real history, with whose to perish with their crimes. Were this termination we are already acquainted. He practice to be universally adopted, might is admirable no less for his humanity than his we not presume to question whether even patriotism; and he is one of the few histothe illustrious name of Frederick the great rians, who have marked the broad line of would be as certain, as it is at present, of be- discrimination between true and false glory, ing carried down to posterity not erecting pomps, triumphs, and victories, Tacitus is the historian of philosophers, into essentials of real greatness. He teachand the oracle of politicians. Highly valu- es patience under censure, inculcates a conable for his deep and acute reflections, in tempt of vulgar acclamation, and of all which neither the governors nor governed praise which is not fairly earned. One valuare spared; he is an original and profound able superiority, which Livy possesses over thinker, and is admirable for the plenitude his competitors, is, that in describing vice, of his images, and the paucity of his words. and vicious characters, he scrupulously conHis style is ardent, and his figures are bold. trives to excite an abhorrence of both; and Vigour, brevity, and point, are its character- his relations never leave on the mind of the istics. He throws out a stronger likeness of reader, a propensity to the crime, or a para flagitious Roman in three words, than a tiality for the criminal whom he has been diffuse writer would give in as many pages. describing. A defect, in this acuteness of In his annals he is a faithful, occasionally, moral feeling, has been highly pernicious to indeed, a too faithful narrator; but he the youthful reader; and this too common is also, at the same time, an honest and admixture of impure description, even when indignant reprover of the atrocious deeds the honest design has been to expose vice, which he records. In a man passionately has sensibly tainted the wholesomeness of loving liberty, virtue, and his country, we historic composition. pardon, while painting the ruin of each, those dark and sullen shades with which he sometimes overcharges the picture. Had he delineated happier times, his tints would probably have been of a lighter cast. If he ever deceives, he does not, at least, ever appear to intend it; for he gives rumours as It has been regretted by some of the crirumours, and his facts he generally grounds tics, that Livy, after enriching his own work on the concurrent testimony of the times of by the most copious plagiarisms from his which he writes. If, however Tacitus ful- great precursor, Polybius, commends him in fils one of the two duties which he himself a way so frigid, as almost to amount to cenprescribes to historians, that of writing with- sure. He does not, it is true, go the length out fear, he does not uniformly accomplish of Voltaire in his treatment of Shakspeare, the cther, that of writing without hatred; at least, neither his veracity nor his candour extended to his remarks on the Jews or Christians.

Independently of those beautiful, though sometimes redundant speeches, which Livy puts into the mouths of his heroes, his eloquent and finished answers to ambassadors, furnish a species of rhetoric peculiarly applicable to a royal education."

who first pillages and then abuses him. The Frenchman, indeed, who spoils what he steals, acts upon the old known principle of his country highwaymen, who always murder where they rob.

But, with all his difuseness Livy is the writer who assists in forming the taste.- If it be thought that we have too warmly With all his warmth, there is a beautiful so- recommended heathen authors, let it be rebriety in his narrations; he does not magni-membered, that in the hands of every enfy the action, he relates it, and pours forth, lightened preceptor, as was eminently the from a full urn, a copious and continued case with Fenelon, pagans almost become stream of varied elegance. He directs the Christian teachers by the manner in which judgment, by passing over slight things in a slight manner, and dwelling only on the prominent parts of his subject, though he has been accused of some important omissions. He keeps the attention always alive, • Examen du Prince de Machiavel, by the king of Prussia. It is curious to compare this composition of its vices. the king with his own conduct. To contrast his strong

they will be explained, elucidated, purified; and not only will the corruptions of paganism be converted into instruction, by being contrasted with the opposite Christian graces, but the Christian system will be advanriance, with many pagan virtues, as with all tageously shown to be almost equally at va

reprobation of the baneful glory of heroes, his horror lue of pagan historians, the profound attenIf there were no other evidence of the vaof conquest, and of the cruel passions which oppress tion which they prove the ancients to have mankind; his professed admiration of clemency, meek. ness, justice, and compassion, with which this work paid to the education of youth, would alone abounds,—with the actual exploits of the ravager of the Suffice to give them considerable weight in fertile plains of Saxony, &c. &c.!! the eyes of every judge of sound instruction.

CHAP. XI.

will be read with singular advantage in connection with the contemporary reigns of English history. In the writings of Sully and Clarendon, may be seen how, for a long time, the passions of kings were contradicted, and often controlled by the wisdom of their ministers; sovereigns who were not insensible to praise, nor averse from flattery, yet submitting, though sometimes with a very ill grace, to receive services rather than adulation. Ministers who consulted the good rather than the humour of their princes; who promoted their interests, instead of gratifying their vices, and who preferred their fame to their favour.

Their regard to youthful modesty, the inculcation of obedience and reserve, the exEnglish History.-Mr. Hume. ercises of self-denial, exacted from children of the highest rank, put to shame,-I will BUT the royal pupil is not to wander alnot say Christians, but many of the nominal ways in the wide field of universal history. professors of Christianity.-Levity, idle- The extent is so vast, and the time for traness, disregard of the laws, contempt of es-velling over it so short, that after being suffitablished systems and national institutions, ciently possessed of that general view of met with a severer reprobation in the pagan mankind which the history of the world exyouth, than is always found among those, inhibits, it seems reasonable to concentrate our day, who yet do not openly renounce the her studies, and to direct her attention to character of Christians. certain great leading points, and especially to Far be it from us, however, to take our those objects with which she has a natural morals from so miserably defective a stan- and more immediate connexion. The histodard as pagan history affords. For though ry of modern Europe abounds with such obphilosophy had given some admirable rules jects. In Robertson's luminous view of the for maintaining the out-works of virtue, state of Europe, the progress of society is Christianity is the only religion which ever traced with just arrangement and philosopretended to expel vice from the heart.-phical precision. His admirable histories of The best qualities of paganism want the best Charles V. and Mary Queen of Scots, sepamotives. Some of the overgrown Roman rate from their great independent merit, virtues, also, though they would have been valuable in their just measure and degree, and in a due symmetry and proportion with other virtues, yet, by their excess, helped to produce those evils which afterwards ruined Rome; while a perfect system of morals, like the Christian, would have prevented those evils. Their patriotism was oppression to the rest of the world. Their virtue was not so much sullied by pride, as founded in it; and their justice was tinctured with a savageness which bears little resemblance to the justice which is taught by Christianity. These two simple precepts of our religion, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and thy neighbour as thyself;these two principles, kept in due exercise, Hume is incomparably the most inform would, like the two powers which govern the ing, as well as the most elegant, of all the natural world, keep the intellectual and spi-writers of English history. His narrative is ritual world in order; would restrain, impel, full, well arranged, and beautifully perspiunite and govern it. cuous. Yet, he is an author who must be In considering the ancient philosophy, read wish extreme caution on a political, but how does the fine gold become dim, before especially on a religious account. Though, the sober lustre of that divine legislator, on occasions where he may be trusted, bewhose kingdom, indeed, was not of this cause his peculiar principles do not interfere, world, but who has taught kings of the his political reflections are usually just, someearth, princes, and all people, those max-times profound. His account of the origin, ims and principles which cast into shade all of the Gothic government is full of interest the false splendours of the antique world!' and information. He marks, with exact Christianity has furnished the only true precision, the progress and decay of the feupractical comment on that grand position of dal manners, when law and order began to the admirable author of the sublime, that prevail, and our constitution assumed somenothing is great the contempt of which is thing like a shape. His finely painted chagreat. For how can triumphs, honours, racters of Alfred and Elizabeth should be riches, power, conquest, fame, be consider-engraved on the heart of every sovereign. ed as of intrinsic value by a Christian, the His political prejudices do not strikingly apvery essence of whose religion consists in be- pear, till the establishment of the house of ing crucified to the world; the very aim and Stewart, nor his religious antipathies till end of whose religion lies in a superiority to about the distant dawn of the reformation all greatness which is to have an end with under Henry V. From that period to its this life; the very nature and genius of full establishment, he is perhaps more danwhose religion tends to prove, that eternal gerous, because less ostensibly daring than life is the only adequate measure the hap-some other infidel historians. It is a serpent piness, and immortal glory the only adequate under a bed of roses. He does not (in his object of the ambition of a Christian.

Mr. Hume.

history at least) so much ridicule religion himself, as invite others to ridicule it. There is in his manner a sedateness which imposes;

in his scepticism, a sly gravity which puts Hume has a fascinating manner at the the reader more off his guard than the vehe-close of the life of a hero, a prince, or a mence of censure, or the levity of wit; for statesman, of drawing up his character so we are always less disposed to suspect a man elaborately as to attract and fix the whole who is too wise to appear angry. That same attention of the reader; and he does it in wisdom which makes him too correct to in- such a way, that while he engages the mind vent calumnies, but it does not preserve him he unsuspectedly misleads it. He makes a from doing what is scarcely less disingenu- general statement of the vices and virtues, ous. He implicitly adopts the injurious re- the good and bad actions of the person whom lations of those annalists who were most hos- he paints, leaving the reader to form his own tile to the reformed faith; though he must conclusions, by casting up the balance of the have known their accounts to be aggravated vices and virtues, of the good and bad acand discoloured, if not absolutely invented. tions thus enumerated: while he never once He thus makes others responsible for the leads the reader to determine on the characworst things he asserts, and spreads the mis- ter by the only sure criterion, the ruling chief, without avowing the malignity. When principle, which seemed to govern it. This he speaks from himself, the sneer is so cool, is the too prevailing method of historians; the irony so sober, the contempt so discreet, they make morals completely independent the moderation so insidious, the difference of religion, by thus weighing qualities, and between popish bigotry, and protestant firm- letting the preponderance of the scale deness, between the fury of the persecutor and cide on virtue, as it were by grains and scruthe resolution of the martyr, so little mark-ples: thus furnishing a standard subversive ed; the distinctions between intolerent fren- of that which Christianity establishes. This zy and heroic zeal so melted into each other, method instead of marking the moral disand though he contrives to make the reader feel some indignation at the tyrant, he never leads him to feel any reverence for the sufferer; he ascribes such a slender superiority to one religious system above another, that the young reader who does not come to the perusal with his principles formed, will be in danger of thinking that the reformation was really not worth contending for.

tinctions, blends and confounds them, by establishing character on an accidental dif ference, often depending on circumstance and occasion, instead of applying to it one eternal rule and motive of action.*

But, there is another evil into which writers far more unexceptionable than Mr. Hume often fall, that of rarely leading the mind to look beyond second causes and huBut, in nothing is the skill of this accom-man agents. It is mortifying to refer them plished sophist more apparent than in the to the example of a pagan. Livy thought artful way in which he piques his readers it no disgrace to proclaim, repeatedly, the into a conformity with his own views con- insufficiency of man to accomplish great cerning religion. Human pride, he knew, naturally likes to range itself on the side of ability. He therefore, skilfully works on this passion, by treating with a sort of contemptuous superiority, as weak and credulous men, all whom he represents as being under the religious delusion, and by uniformly insinuating that talents and piety belong to opposite parties,

To the shameful practice of confounding fanaticism with real religion, he adds the disingenuous habit of accounting for the best actions of the best men, by referring them to some low motive; and affects to confound the designs of the religious and the corrupt, so artfully, that no radical difference appears to subsist between them.

objects without divine assistance. He was not ashamed to refer events to the direction and control of providence; and when he speaks of notorious criminals, he is not contented with describing them as transgressing against the state, but represents them as also offending against the gods.

Yet, it is proper again to notice the defects of ancient authors in their views of providential interference; a defect arising from their never clearly including a future state in their account. They seem to have conceived themselves as fairly entitled by their good conduct to the divine favour, which favour they usually limited to present prosperity. Whereas all notions of divine justice must of necessity be widely erroneous, in which a future retribution is not ununambiguously and constantly included.

It is injurious to a young mind to read the history of the reformation by any author, how accurate soever he may be in his facts, who does not see a divine power accompa- *If these remarks may be thought too severe by some nying this great work; by any author who readers for that degree of scepticism which appears in ascribes to the power, or rather to the per- Mr. Hume's history may I not be allowed to observe that verseness of nature, and the obstinacy of he was shown his principles so fully, in some of his other innovotion, what was in reality an effect of works, that we are entitled, on the ground of these providential direction; by any who discerns works, to read with suspicion every thing he says which nothing but human resources, or stubborn borders on religion?—A circumstance apt to be forgotperseverance, where a Christian distinguish- ten by many who read only his history. es, though with a considerable alloy of hu

man imperfection, the operation of the Spirit

of God.