BENTLEY'S MISCELLANY.

MEMOIR OF SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, BART.

WITH A PORTRAIT.

SIR ARCHIBALD ALISON, Bart., whom our Ministers have lately honoured themselves by honouring, is the son of the Rev. Archibald Alison, Prebendary of Sarum, Rector of Roddington, and Vicar of High Ercall, in the County of Salop. The mother of the historian of the French Revolution was Dorothea, whose maiden surname was Gregory, and who was a lineal descendant of James Gregory the celebrated mathematician, Sir Isaac Newton's contemporary.

Sir Archibald Alison is now in his sixty-first year, having been born on the 29th day of January, 1792, at Kenley in Shropshire.

Though southron by birth, he was destined to make Scotland the scene of his professional and literary career. He was educated for the Scotch bar; and on the 8th of December, 1814, passed Advocate at Edinburgh.

In February, 1823, he was appointed Advocate-depute and King's Counsel; and on the 19th of December, 1834, he was promoted to the station of Sheriff of Lanarkshire, the highest judicial office in Scotland next to the Bench: he has continued to hold this station to the present time.

Sir Archibald Alison's professional reputation is not limited to Scotland. He is the author of a work on the criminal law of that country (published in 1831), which not only shows a full mastery of the technical details and local minutiae of the subject, but also displays a comprehensive knowledge of the principles of jurisprudence, and a keen insight into the workings of human nature. English writers on criminal law, and especially on the law of evidence, have gladly used extracts from its pages. Though, we suspect, that out of the numerous young English barristers who study in their "Roscoe," the advice of "an eminent writer on the criminal law of Scotland" about testing the credibility of accomplices, and other similar points, but very few suspect that the Alison, whom they there find quoted, is the same person as the renowned historian of Europe during the period of the French Revolution.

It is in this latter character that Sir Archibald Alison has acquired his high eminence in England, in Anglo-Saxon America, and, indeed, in every part of the globe where the English language is spoken. This great historical work is the fruit of the assiduous labours of twentyone years. Its success has been proportionate to the honourable toil which was bestowed upon its composition. The old maxim that

"Nil sine magno

Vita labore dedit,"

is emphatically true of history. Historical romances may be dashed off with a rapid pen, but works that really deserve the name of histories, must be slowly moulded out of the hived wisdom of many a studious year.

The "History of Europe during the French Revolution," first appeared in successive volumes between April, 1833, and June, 1842. Since the completion of the work, eight more large editions have been called for in this country, and the sale across the Atlantic of the American reprints has been even larger.

Such success is, in this instance, decisive proof of merits. Not that the popularity of an historical work is always a test of its excellence. A history may be written, like Lamartine's "History of the Girondins," in a flowery, brilliant style; it may be filled with startling but strong paradoxes;- it may abound in poetical descriptions and in scenes of dramatic excitement ;-it may thus fascinate thousands of readers; and yet, from its writer's carelessness about facts, and rashness in theories, it may be worthless as a history, and only entitled to take its station among the creations of the novelist. But the popularity of Alison's History cannot be said to have been acquired by any meretricious ornaments of style, or any system of appealing to the imagination and the passions, instead of the reason. He can describe graphically, and can exhibit character vividly when occasion requires ; but the general qualities of his history are an austere gravity in its reflections on facts, and an almost painful conscientiousness as to the completeness and accuracy with which the facts themselves are stated. We believe that its volumes are very seldom taken up for amusement, but that they are justly prized as never-failing store-houses of instruction.

Indeed the principal charge made against this history is an accusation of being too elaborate and too prolix. Sir Archibald Alison may well adopt the defence made by two other great modern English historians to similar complaints. When Arnold was blamed for the length of his volumes, his answer was, "I am convinced by a tolerably large experience, that most readers find it almost impossible to impress on their memories a mere abridgment of history. The number of names and events crowded into a small space is overwhelming to them, and the absence of details in the narrative makes it impossible to communicate to it much of interest. Neither characters nor events can be developed with that particularity which is the best help to memory, because it attracts and engages us, and impresses images on the mind as well as facts." And Sir Francis Palgrave, in the preface to his recent "History of Normandy and England," justly says on the same point:-"Not merely are meagre abridgments devoid of interest, but under the existing circumstances of society they become snares for the conscience, seducing men to content themselves with a perfunctory notion of history, and, when occasion calls, to act upon imperfect knowledge."

Besides his "Opus Magnum," Sir Archibald Alison has enriched our literature with a life of the great Duke of Marlborough, which is one of the most delightful and instructive pieces of historical biography in our language. From the greater unity and comparative brevity of its subject, this work is a more agreeable one than the "History of Europe," while, at the same time, it gives clear and full information respecting the events of a very memorable period in our annals. The first edition of it was published in 1847; but a second edition has recently appeared, with such ample additions and numerous improvements, as to make it almost a new work. We extract from it

a portion of Sir Archibald's admirable parallel of the Duke of Marlborough with the Duke of Wellington.

Though similar in many respects, so far as the general conduct of their campaigns is concerned, from the necessity under which both laboured of husbanding the blood of their soldiers, the military qualities of England's two chiefs were essentially different, and each possessed some points in which he was superior to the other. By nature Wellington was more daring than Marlborough, and though soon constrained by necessity to adopt a cautious system, he continued, throughout all his career, to incline more to a hazardous policy than his great predecessor. The intrepid advance and fight at Assaye, the crossing of the Douro and movement on Talavera in 1809, the advance to Madrid and Burgos in 1812, the actions before Bayonne in 1813, the desperate stand made at Waterloo in 1815-place this beyond a doubt. Marlborough never hazarded so much on the success of a single enterprise: he ever aimed at compassing his objects by skill and combination, rather than risking them on the chance of arms. Wellington was a mixture of Turenne and Eugene: Marlborough was the perfection of the Turenne school alone. No man could fight more ably and gallantly than Marlborough: his talent and rapidity of eye in tactics were at least equal to his skill in strategy and previous combination. But he was not partial to such desperate passages-at-arms, and never resorted to them but from necessity, or when encouraged by a happy opportunity for striking a blow. The proof of this is decisive. Marlborough, during ten campaigns, fought only five pitched battles. Wellington, in seven, fought fifteen, in every one of which he proved victorious.

"Marlborough's consummate generalship, throughout his whole career, kept him out of disaster. It was said, with justice, that he never fought a battle which he did not gain, nor laid siege to a town which he did not take. He took about twenty fortified places of the first order, generally in presence of an enemy's army superior to his own. Wellington's more desperate circumstances frequently involved him in peril, and on some occasions caused serious losses to his army; but they were the price at which he purchased his transcendent successes. Wellington's bolder strategy gained for him advantages which the more circumspect measures of his predecessor never could have attained. Marlborough would never, with scarcely any artillery, have hazarded the attack on Burgos, nor incurred the perilous chances of the retreat from that town; but he never would have delivered the south of the Peninsula in a single campaign, by throwing himself, with forty thousand men, upon the communications, in the north, of a hundred and fifty thousand. It is hard to say which was the greatest general, if their merits in the field alone are considered; but Wellington's successes were the more vital to his country, for they delivered it from the greater peril; and they were more honourable to himself, for they were achieved against greater odds. And his fame in future times will be proportionally brighter; for the final overthrow of Napoleon, and the destruction of the revolutionary power, in a single battle, present an object of surpassing interest, to which there is nothing in history perhaps parallel, and which, to the latest generation, will fascinate the minds of men.

Marlborough laid great stress on cavalry in war; his chief successes in the field were owing to the skilful use made of a powerful reserve body of horse in the decisive point, and at the decisive moment. It was thus that he overthrew the French centre at Blenheim, by the charge of six thousand cavalry headed by himself in person, in the interval between that village and Oberglau; struck the decisive blow at Ramilies by the charge of a reserve of twenty squadrons drawn from the rear of the right; and broke through the formidable intrenchments at Malplaquet, by instantly following up the irruption of Lord Orkney into the centre of the lines by a vigorous charge of thirty squadrons of cavalry in at the opening. The proportion of horse to infantry was much greater in his armies than it has since been in the British service; it was never under eighty, and at last as high as a hundred and sixty squadrons, which, at the usual rate of a hundred and fifty to a squadron, must, when complete, have mustered twelve and twenty-four thousand sabres. This was from a fourth to a fifth of their amount at each time. His horse, in great part composed of the steady German dragoons, was in general of the very best description. Wellington's victories were, for the most part, less owing to the action of cavalry; but that was because the country which was the theatre of war-Portugal, Spain, and the south of France--was commonly too rocky or mountainous to admit of the use of horse on an extended scale, and he had not nearly so large a body of cavalry at his disposal. Where they could be

rendered available, he made the best use of this powerful arm, as was shown in Le Marchant's noble charge at Salamanca, Bock's with the heavy Germans next day, and Ponsonby's, Vivian's, and Somerset's at Waterloo.

"Marlborough was more fortunate than Wellington, perhaps more so than any general of modern times, in sieges. He took nearly all the strongest places in Europe in presence of an enemy's army, always equal, generally superior to his own: he hever once laid siege to a fortress that he did not subdue. His reduction of Lille, with its noble garrison of fifteen thousand men, in presence of Vendôme at the head of a hundred and twenty thousand, was the most wonderful achievement of the kind which modern Europe had witnessed. Wellington was less fortunate in this branch of warfare. He made three successful sieges, those of Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajos, and San Sebastian; but he sustained three bloody repulses, at Badajos in 1811, Burgos in 1812, and San Sebastian in the first siege in 1813. But in justice to Wellington, the essential difference between his situation and that of Marlborough in this respect must be considered. The latter carried on the war in Flanders close to the strongholds of Austria and Holland, at no great distance from the arsenals of England, and with the facilities of water-carriage in general for bringing up his battering-trains. His troops, trained by experience in the long war which terminated with the peace of Ryswick, in 1697, had become as expert as their enemies in all the branches of the military art.

"Wellington carried on the war at a great distance from the resources of Great Britain, with little aid from the inefficient or distracted councils of Portugal or Spain, in a mountainous country where water-communication could only penetrate, a short way into the interior, in presence of an enemy's force always double, often triple, his own, and with troops whom a century of domestic peace, bought by Marlborough's victories, had caused so completely to forget the practical details of war, that even some of the best of the general officers, when they embarked for the Peninsula, had to be told what a ravelin and a counterscarp were. He was compelled by the pressure of time, and the approach of forces greatly superior to his own, to make assaults as his last chance, when the breaches were scarcely practicable, and the parapets and defences around them had not even been knocked away. The attacks on Ciudad Rodrigo and Badajoz were not regular sieges; they were sudden assaults on strong places by a sort of coup-de-main, under circumstances where methodical approaches were impossible. Whoever weighs these circumstances, so far from wondering at the chequered fortune of Wellington in sieges, will rather be surprised that he was successful at all."

Sir Archibald Alison is a man of strong political opinions, which are freely expressed throughout his historical works. But, without pronouncing here any judgment as to the soundness or unsoundness of the Alisonian politics, we may remark that even those who differ from his politics most widely, still find Alison's histories of very great value. This arises from the scrupulous fairness and fulness with which he invariably states the facts. He not only is free from the direct crimes of the suppressio veri, and the suggestio falsi, but he never uses that fallaciously artistic grouping and colouring, which some writers practise, and by which they succeed in making their whole scenes convey unfair impressions, though there is no one point of detail, which, if taken separately, can be convicted of incorrectness.

Besides the works which we have mentioned, Sir Archibald Alison has written a treatise on the " Principles of Population," which was published at Edinburgh in 1839; and, during the last year, three volumes of Essays have appeared, consisting chiefly of reprinted contributions to "Blackwood's Magazine," a periodical, of which he has long been a strong support and a brilliant ornament. In June of this year her Majesty, by the advice of her Ministers, raised him to the dignity of a Baronet of the United Kingdom.

He is understood to be now engaged in a continuation of his History of Europe from 1815 to the present time. We heartily wish him health and leisure to complete his labours, and many long years to enjoy their renown.