Cromwell dynasty. It would fulfil the mocracy and fraternity of nations. The principal objects for which they had fought. latter dictated all their plans of action, but It was a monarchy, to be sure, but a truly in the executing of those plans they fell constitutional monarchy and no monarchy helplessly into the power of the former. of divine right, and it would place England They most sincerely desired the general irrevocably among the Protestant powers well-being, and so perverted had the poliof Europe. There is nothing here that re- tics of the old régime been, that the notion sembles the complete apostasy of Napoleon, of making the general well-being the obnor can we imagine Cromwell committing ject of government had something novel such a treason without losing every fol- and intoxicating in it. That liberty was lower he had and collapsing with ignominy. the principal part of national well-being What, then, is the ground of the difference? they thought they believed, but did not; Despotism in France had an infinitely for their long experience of despotism prestronger hold upon the national mind than vented them from realizing the nature of it had in England. In England it rested liberty. It was a sounding word which on no military force, it had been rather reminded them of Plutarch, but the reality, apprehended than actually suffered; at any when it was put before them, disconcerted rate, it was resisted in its weak beginnings. and disgusted them. Liberty means in What the French rebelled against was, the practice prolix and often barren discussion; maturity or the decrepitude of it; a system a great deal of nonsense talked; a respectof despotism which had been elaborated by ful hearing given to stupidity; occasional great statesmen, which had continued in delays when dispatch would be desirable; operation for a century and a half, which perpetual compromises; perpetual renunhad moulded the national character, which ciation of pet crotchets. It means, loyalty had become identified with the national in the minority towards the majority, and glories, above all, which had given France considerateness in the majority towards the character of the leading military state the minority. It does not, except in exof Europe. It is only when it is associated tremely rare cases, mean stabbing a tyrant with militarism that despotism becomes a or cutting off a son's head for treason. Yet chronic and almost an incurable evil. In it was this latter kind of liberty that the itself despotism is a thing easy to hate and Revolution cried for; the other kind they easy to throw off, but it becomes attractive, found altogether intolerable. They had fascinating, and powerful when it connects schooled themselves to shed their blood itself with a military system. Then it lays freely, and the blood of other people still hold of the hearts of a nation, modifies all more freely, for their country, but giving their views, and makes it difficult for them up their opinions and submitting to a main the end to imagine any other sort of jority required a self-sacrifice they had no government. The French Revolution was notion of. So steeped were they in the the attempt of a nation which had been influences of despotism, that the word "liblong organized as an army to organize it- erty " entirely changed its meaning in their self as a state, of a nation long accustomed mouths, and came to mean merely unseland inured to servitude, to practise the fish despotism. The phrase "sovereignty rules of freedom. In other words, it was of the people" when interpreted by their the struggle of a nation, not merely against practice, was seen to signify not that the its institutions, but against inveterate hab- power of the people should be sovereign, its, a struggle with its own nature as well but merely that their interests should be as with its rulers. Inexperience of free sovereign or paramount. Without any institutions is often given as the explana- hesitation, and probably without any contion of what was wild in the French Revo-scious insincerity, the revolutionary school lution, but the phrase does not adequately express the fact. It was not so much want of experience that hampered the French as possession of too much contrary experience. It was not so much that they did not know the routine of free life, as that they knew so thoroughly the routine of despotism. They were not at a loss for precedents, but all their precedents were of the wrong kind. They were under the influence of a political tradition which was intensely despotic and military, and at the same time of a political impulse which led towards de

which had the phrase oftenest in their mouths, devoted themselves to defeat the will of the majority, and to thwart by the most violent means the wishes of the sovereign people. Not less were they steeped in the influences of militarism. As we have said, despotism and war are closely connected. War produces despotism in regular course, and no despotism is safe for long except by means of war. The old régime had accustomed France to military predominance in Europe. Meanwhile, the impulse of the French Revolution was to

wards universal fraternity, in other words, | possible that he was at the head of affairs. it was in a direction exactly opposite to the The unfitness for liberty that the old national tradition. If it had been followed régime had created in the French had been faithfully it would have led France to re- increased tenfold by the crimes of the pent of all her unjust aggressions of for- Jacobins, which had left behind them a mer times, to become ashamed of the spirit of party hatred, as M. Thiers justly glory of the Grand Monarque, and to con- says, unparalleled in other nations. It is fine herself for the future to strictly defen- certain that Napoleon, more than any sive warfare. But the new impulse had other man, had brought the French to not strength to quench the old fierce in- this. Long before he became their despot stinct. They blended into a monstrous he had been their evil genius. He princicombination. As liberty had been trans- pally had corrupted their armies, demoralformed into unselfish despotism, so frater-ized their foreign policy, and given ascendnity was interpreted to mean not peace, ancy in civil affairs to the military power. but unselfish war. The barbarous concep- The usurpation of Fructidor, which may tion of a crusade in the cause of human be regarded as the final suppression of brotherhood took possession of the revolu- liberty by the revolutionary power, was in tionary mind, and created that direst form reality the act of Napoleon. But concedof enthusiasm which results from the mix-ing all this to M. Lanfrey, we yet believe ture of the highest with the strongest passions, an enthusiasm like that of the Spaniards in the new world, when the thoughts of finding gold and of converting the Indians ran together in their minds.

that once at the head of affairs, Napoleon, had he been the most virtuous of men, could not have played the part of Washington. The part of an absolute ruler was the only one he could take. The Thus, while France had changed all her wheel had come full circle, and France was principles, she had retained all her old again at 1789. She had again a governhabits. She still was, and intended to ment; the revolution was over; men of continue, the great despotic and military all parties could once more be employed in state of Europe. All she had done was, public affairs; the government had secuas it were, to baptize her despotism and rity enough to think and act for itself. her warfare by dedicating them to good But the new government was essentially objects. She had adopted philanthropy as of the same kind as that of the old régime. her end and violence as her instrument, It was a despotism, and its vigour lay not both at home and abroad. The end and at all in popular sympathy and co-operathe means were radically incompatible. tion, but in organization and centralizaThe combination indeed was powerful tion. It was of the same kind but resting enough, but it could not continue as it upon somewhat different supports. The was for a moment. One of the two ele-noblesse and the clergy were gone, but ments must absorb the other. There their place was supplied by a victorious and would be a short transition in which revolutionary philanthropy and military despotism would seem to meet and blend, and then one of the two would disappear. This is the explanation of the ambiguity we have noted in Napoleon Bonaparte. In his government France hoped she had put the soul of the Revolution into the forms of the old régime, but she killed the Revolution in doing so.

It is difficult to imagine that the drama could have ended in any other way. Military despotism was inevitable, not merely, as we commonly imagine, by way of reaction against anarchy- this view is misleading but as the effect of a long and invincible tradition of despotic and military government. But much depended on the character of the despot. Might Napoleon, as Byron thought and M. Lanfrey seems half to think, have played the part of a Washington? Nay, it was just because liberty and the Republic were im

favoured army, and by that wide-spread terror of revolution, which, owing to the crimes of the Jacobins, was to be a principal lever in European politics for something like half a century. The new government, therefore, was almost as strong as that of Louis XIV. in the last days of Mazarin, when the Fronde had been put down. It was a most powerful depotism, but not, we think, powerful enough to have created liberty, for that is the one thing that no despot is powerful enough to do. We believe that Napoleon might have reigned so as to obtain for himself and for France true glory, but we do not believe that he could have done much for freedom.

Had he had ordinary good dispositions and as much benevolence as most rulers have had- -even those that have been trained as soldiers and have been ambitious of glory he might have given France a position at this day higher than Prussia

war,

holds in Europe. His own government, Napoleon to understand his true mission. was secure, and his position in Europe was Military government and civil governcommanding. He could have no need of ment are such different things, that a man but we might have pardoned him if who has a very decided genius for either with his military training and talents he of them is not likely to excel at the same had been a little too ready to appeal to time in the other. It might have been calthe sword in support of a good cause. culated from the beginning that Napoleon But the principal problem before him was would turn out something of a tyrant; evidently the reconstitution of society at but it was not unreasonable to hope that he home. He had first "pacis imponere might prove a generous tyrant, a man morem," that is, to prevent the parties with some beliefs, and some ideas, holding from flying at each other's throats, until something sacred, having some cause at they could gradually forget their animosi- heart. A successful general is often narties. This could only be done by preserv- row-minded and hard, but he may be exing an attitude of impartial justice towards pected to be a man of worth, fidelity, and all of them. While he maintained the generosity. The character Napoleon actfirst condition of all well-being, order, he ually displayed was most peculiar, and had only to give free scope in his realm to one which Englishmen do not readily conall the beneficial innovations of the Revo-ceive. It was a primitive classical characlution. At that moment probably France, ter. He never excited disgust or hatred, well-guided, might have taken a lead but, on the contrary, admiration and even among nations that would have left them enthusiastic devotion. No one is ashamed at a hopeless distance behind her. The of admiring Napoleon, while it requires mind of the people had been stirred to its courage to admire Robespierre, and to say depths; it had had an experience from a word in defence of Marat. Yet morally, which it might have learned much; the Robespierre and even Marat are as much yoke of routine, convention, corruption, higher than Napoleon as a man is above a indolence, and irresponsibility in govern- brute. Napoleon eludes moral criticism; ors had been broken. Intelligence had you feel that it is not applicable to him. been stimulated and set free; with an It is not absurd to speak of virtue and honest and magnanimous government, with a ruler employing patriotically so much energy, inventiveness, and talent for organizing, France might have enjoyed a golden age. Industrial habits might have been formed, enlightenment made universal, genius encouraged, the revival of religion protected from the fatal protection of despotism, a preparation made through universal education for liberty, the country exhibited to feudal Europe as a specimen of what modern principles could do. Instead of all this, what do we see? We see the traditional basis of the nation for war, and therefore for despotism, increased to a disease, its morality corrupted by a successful course of spoilation, education and religion violently perverted to serve the cause of tyranny, genius persecuted and silenced, a whole age of human history disgraced and wasted, a new variety of tyranny invented, party feuds embittered until half a century later, they threaten to bury the nation in final ruin.

All this has resulted from the fact that at a critical moment of bewilderment, when everything depended upon the character of her sovereign, France fell in with the man best calculated, of all the men mentioned in history, to ruin her.

M. Lanfrey justly observes, that it was unreasonable to expect a man trained like

duty in connection with Robespierre; he sincerely, perhaps ardently wished to do good. A man without any such wish, a man of high intelligence and in the midst of the highest civilization, who showed no regard for human happiness either in his ends or his means, and who proceeded in his godless course without either remorse or weariness, holding himself proudly erect before the world, playing his part with a sort of grace, outraging every right and violating every sanctity, and all with a joyful and triumphant energy worthy of Wordsworth's "Happy Warrior;" such a portent confounds the imagination, and sets us almost unconsciously upon altering the plain facts in order to make them more conceivable. We conjecture of purposes that Napoleon may have had, pleas that he may have made to himself in justification of his actions. But all such attempts are vain. Mr. Browning thinks he had "a vague idea of setting things to rights." This theory might account for a great deal of violence, but it does not explain the principal facts of Napoleon's career. The question is why, when France was put helplessly in his hands, did he occupy himself not at all in setting things to rights, but first in consolidating his already excessive power and making it hereditary, next in consuming the nation in

foreign wars. We could easily conceive This Corsican or semi-barbarous characthat he believed his own dictatorship the ter of Napoleon, has not till lately been best thing for France, but it is impossible sufficiently remarked. In the old comparto conceive that he considered a heredit- isons which used to be drawn, as by Halary despotism of the same kind as that lam and Macaulay, between Napoleon and over which he had so often triumphed in Cæsar or Cromwell, it is overlooked. Austria, to be a good thing. It is impos- Cæsar represented the highest culture of sible to conceive that he thought it a good his age and nation. Cromwell representthing to convert religion into an engine of ed not indeed the highest culture, but the despotism, and to rule by means of super- best, freshest, most earnest, and most restition and ignorance. This was the ob- ligious part of his countrymen. But Naject of the concordat, and yet he had be- poleon came from the most barbarous part fore him in Spain a sample of the effects of Europe to rule over the politest nation of the alliance between despotism and in it. The dictatorship of the first two priestcraft. It is still more impossible to was, in some measure, the natural dictatorimagine that he had any good object in his ship which is assumed in stormy times by foreign conquest. A whole generation superior wisdom and insight. Napoleon's given up to slaughter would have been a dictatorship was that, which, when right heavy price even for some very beneficial gives place entirely to might, falls naturevolution in Europe; it was paid merely rally to barbarism over civilization. In for substituting military bureaucracy for fierceness, in perfidy, in effrontery, it was feudal asistocracy. Nothing but ruin could hopeless for Paris to compete with Corsica. follow from Napoleon's conquests, and The men who had ideas, principles, and though we need not suppose that he was scruples, were no match for the unencumfully aware of this, we may believe that he bered, unhesitating force and fraud of the was completely indifferent to it, and that barbarian. he was not at all convinced of the contrary. No man ever showed more simplicity or singleness of character than Napoleon. He knew his own mind thoroughly, and his mind never changed. Nor did he in the main care to conceal his views, for though he was a great deceiver, his frauds were of the nature of military stratagems, avowed and boasted of as soon as their purpose was served. Hence his character is very transparent to anyone who is prepared for a man entirely without either morality or benevolence. He is quite of another order from the fanatics of the Revolution. He is as unscupulous as they about means, but then his ends are just as immoral as his means. They had patriotism and philanthropy terribly corrupted by vanity and by that superstition of force which springs up so readily in a despotism. In him the patriotism and the philanthropy are simply absent. He has their despotic temper heightened by the habit of military command, and vanity, which was a blemish in them, is in him the sole principle of action. But this vanity, which in other men seems so contemptible, has in him such an intensity and childlike simplicity, that it becomes impressive and almost heroic. Classed among civilized men, the children of Christianity and chivalry, he appears hateful and actually monstrous, but one instinctively feels that he ought not to be classed among them. Considered as a barbarian, he has a certain Homeric charm.

Napoleon stands to France in the same sort of relation as Philip of Macedon to Greece. Phillip was in one sense a Greek, and in another sense not. He spoke the same language, he read the same books, as the Athenian orators. Homer was common to him and them. But yet there was a moral chasm between them, so that their contest might fairly be called a contest between barbarism and civilization. The Athenians had been raised by a century and a half of free and noble life to quite another moral level. For them Eschylus had written, and Pericles spoken, and Socrates conversed. They had become moral and civilized beings. Meanwhile, the kings of Macedon had waged perpetual war with barbarous tribes. Society with them had remained in the old Homeric stage. What they had gained from their participation in Greek life was simply military science. They had learned to fight like Greeks, but in everything else they were barbarians. They were vastly inferior to the Greeks, but for that very reason they could conquer them. With a superficial varnish of culture, and master of that science from which barbarism reaps more advantage than civilization, the science of war, Philip, at the head of a great army, and superior to all restraints of morality and good faith, could easily crush Athens. Nor was Bonaparte, bred up among the fierce Corsican feuds, less superior to all the civilization of Paris. He took from France her lan

guage and her military science, he got pos- ilization, and had given up the New Testasession of an army which he demoralized, ment for Plutarch, appreciated keenly. and by the "dishonest victory" of Brumaire, Napoleon seemed just the vigorous child established the reign of the barbarian in of Nature they wanted. His classic face the capital city of European culture. and energetic action reminded them of But because Napoleon not merely pre- some Homeric hero idealized by Greek tended to be, but really was a barbarian, sculpture. he gained a peculiar ascendency over the The moral of the story is that the worFrench imagination. To civilized men ship of the antique, whatever it may be in there is always something fascinating in art is not successful in politics and morals. the simple and intense passions of barba- Plutarch is a capital book for boys, but it rism. Morality brings with it so many does not make a good Bible. When a whole hesitations, misgivings, second thoughts, nation forms themselves upon it, there is the that sometimes we seem paralyzed by it. danger that while one is struck by the life The barbarian feels simply and wills of Timoleon and another by that of Cato, strongly; he does not "hesitate and trifle some youth with a talent for military life away." All this the generation that science may make himself too fatally mashad read Rousseau's invectives against civ-ter of the life of Alexander the Great.

SIR THOMAS PHILLIPS, BART.—We have to with this prince of accumulators. Sir Thomas announce the decease of the greatest book col- bought library after library, collection after collector of modern times. Sir Thomas Phillips, lection. Nothing came amiss, manuscripts havof Middlehill, co. Worcester, and Thirlstane ing the preference; but when manuscripts were House, Cheltenham, expired on Tuesday, at the not to be obtained, printed books were not delast-named residence. The story of his life is spised. Occasionally he would purchase the soon told. He was born at Manchester, in July, entire stock of a bookseller. When the late iu1792, and was the only son of Mr. Thomas telligent and excellent bookseller, Thrope, issued Phillips, a wealthy and intelligent manufacturer a thick octavo catalogue of about fourteen hunof that city. Mr. Phillips, shortly after the dred volumes of manuscripts, most people would birth of his son, retired to Middlehill, a resi- have been contented with a selection, but Sir dence beautifully situated on the Cotswold Hills, Thomas ordered the whole. Some of the most near Broadway. He was a good, worthy man, valuable portions of his library, including the of exceptionably simple habits, bent on the con- whole of the Battle Abbey Charters, were purtinual increase of his estates; his sole object of chased from Thrope. Perhaps, however, the life, as he frequently owned, being to make his most important collection he ever acquired was son not only a county gentleman, but the most the celebrated Meerman library of Greek manulearned man of his county. It is not often that scripts. He was also a liberal purchaser at the pet schemes of this nature are so perfectly real- Guildford, Heber, and other sales. One of his ized. The late baronet was not only a fine chief fancies was for monastic cartularies, of scholar, but he was one of the most learned men which he had the finest collection in private of the age. No one, if judging from the works hands. His library is also peculiarly rich in issued from his private press, could form an everything relating to genealogy and family hisidea of the vast range of his knowledge and tory; but the Middlehill collection is of so enoracquirements in nearly every branch of histor-mous an extent, that nearly every description of ical and antiquarian lore. learning is well represented, and it would ocSir Thomas was educated at Rugby and Uni-cupy a volume to give merely a general descripversity College, Oxford, taking his degree of M.A. in the year 1820. Upon the death of his father, in 1818, he succeeded not only to the estates, but to large accumulations of ready money. Previously to this event, a strong taste for antiquarian pursuits had developed itself, and now, with ample means for their gratification, it was not long before his love of such studies exhibited itself in what proved to be the ruling passion of a long life- the accumulation of ancient manuscripts.

tion of the contents of the library.

Sir Thomas was created a baronet in 1821, and a few years ago he was elected a Trustee of the British Museum, but he did not, we believe, take any active part in the management of that institution. He was twice married: first in 1819, to Harriet, third daughter of Lieut.-Gen. Sir Thomas Monyneux, Bart., by whom he had three daughters; secondly, in 1842, to Elizabeth, daughter of the Rev. W. J. Mansell. As he died without male issue, the estates devolve on his eldest daughter, and the title becomes extinct. The destination of his important library is not at present known.

Athenæum.