we have noticed is this: that the French Revolution was at bottom an attempt to realise Christianity, and fairly put it in action, in our world. For eighteen centuries (it is not denied) men had been doing more or less that way; but they set their shoulder rightly to the wheel, and gave a dead-lift, for the first time then. Good M. Roux ! And yet the good Roux does mean something by this; and even something true. But a marginal annotator has written on our copy, For the love of Heaven, Messieurs, humez vos formules'; make away with your formulas; take off your facetted spectacles; open your eyes a little, and look! There is, indeed, here and there, considerable rumbling of the rotatory calabash, which rattles and rumbles, concerning Progress of the Species, Doctrine du Progrès, Exploitations, le Christ, le Verbe, and what not; written in a vein of deep, even of intense seriousness; but profitable, one would think, to no man or woman. In this style M. Roux (for it is he, we understand) painfully composes a Preface to each Volume, and has even given a whole introductory History of France: we read some seven or eight of his first Prefaces, hoping always to get some nourishment; but seldom or never cut him open now. Fighting, in that way, behind cover, he is comparatively harmless; merely wasting you so many pence per number: happily the space he takes is small. Whoever wants to form for himself an image of the actual state of French Meditation, and under what surprising shackles a French thinking man of these days finds himself gyved, and mechanised, and reduced to the verge of zero, may open M. Roux's Prefaces, and see it as in an expressive summary.

We wish our two French friends all speed in their business; and do again honestly recommend this Histoire Parlementaire to any and all of our English friends who take interest in that subject.

SIR WALTER SCOTT'

[1838]

AMERICAN Cooper asserts, in one of his books, that there is 'an instinctive tendency in men to look at any man who has become distinguished.' True, surely as all observation and survey of mankind, from China to Peru, from Nebuchadnezzar to Old Hickory, will testify! Why do men crowd towards the improved-drop at Newgate, eager to catch a sight? The man about to be hanged is in a distinguished situation. Men crowd to such extent, that Greenacre's is not the only life choked-out there. Again, ask of these leathern vehicles, cabriolets, neat-flies, with blue men and women in them, that scour all thoroughfares, Whither so fast? To see dear Mrs. Rigmarole, the distinguished female; great Mr. Rigmarole, the distinguished male! Or, consider that crowning phenomenon, and summary of modern civilisation, a soirée of lions. Glittering are the rooms, well-lighted, thronged; bright flows their undulatory flood of blonde-gowns and dress-coats, a soft smile dwelling on all faces; for behold there also flow the lions, hovering distinguished: oracles of the age, of one sort or another. Oracles really pleasant to see; whom it is worth while to go and see: look at them, but inquire not of them, depart rather and be thankful. For your lion-soirée admits not of speech; there lies the specialty of it. A meeting together of human creatures; and yet (so high has civilisation gone) the primary aim of human meeting, that soul might in some articulate utterance unfold itself to soul, can be dis

1 LONDON AND Westminster Review, No. 12.-Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Baronet. Vols. i.-vi. Edinburgh, 1837.

pensed with in it. Utterance there is not; nay, there is a certain grinning play of tongue-fence, and make-believe of utterance, considerably worse than none. For which reason it has been suggested, with an eye to sincerity and silence in such lion-soirées, Might not each lion be, for example, ticketed, as wine-decanters are? Let him carry, slung round him, in such ornamental manner as seemed good, his silver label with name engraved; you lift his label, and read it, with what farther ocular survey you find useful, and speech is not needed at all. O Fenimore Cooper, it is most true there is 'an instinctive tendency in men to look at any man that has become distinguished'; and, moreover, an instinctive desire in men to become distinguished and be looked at!

For the rest, we will call it a most valuable tendency this; indispensable to mankind. Without it, where were star-andgarter, and significance of rank; where were all ambition, money-getting, respectability of gig or no gig; and, in a word, the main impetus by which society moves, the main force by which it hangs together? A tendency, we say, of manifold results; of manifold origin, not ridiculous only, but sublime ;-which some incline to deduce from the mere gregarious purblind nature of man, prompting him to run, as dim-eyed animals do, towards any glittering object, were it but a scoured tankard, and mistake it for a solar luminary,' or even sheeplike, to run and crowd because many have already run'! It is indeed curious to consider how men do make the gods that themselves worship. For the most famed man, round whom all the world rapturously huzzahs and venerates, as if his like were not, is the same man whom all the world was wont to jostle into the kennels; not a changed man, but in every fibre of him the same man. Foolish world, what went ye out to see? A tankard scoured bright: and do there not lie, of the selfsame pewter, whole barrowfuls of tankards, though by worse fortune all still in the dim state?

And yet, at bottom, it is not merely our gregarious sheep

like quality, but something better, and indeed best: what has been called the perpetual fact of hero-worship'; our inborn sincere love of great men! Not the gilt farthing, for its own sake, do even fools covet; but the gold guinea which they mistake it for. Veneration of great men is perennial in the nature of man; this, in all times, especially in these, is one of the blessedest facts predicable of him. In all times, even in these seemingly so disobedient times, it remains a blessed fact, so cunningly has Nature ordered it, that whatsoever man ought to obey, he cannot but obey. Show the dullest clodpole, show the haughtiest featherhead, that a soul higher than himself is actually here; were his knees stiffened into brass, he must down and worship.' So it has been written; and may be cited and repeated till known to all. Understand it

well, this of 'hero-worship' was the primary creed, and has intrinsically been the secondary and ternary, and will be the ultimate and final creed of mankind; indestructible, changing in shape, but in essence unchangeable; whereon polities, religions, loyalties, and all highest human interests have been and can be built, as on a rock that will endure while man endures. Such is hero-worship; so much lies in that our inborn sincere love of great men !-In favour of which unspeakable benefits of the reality, what can we do but cheerfully pardon the multiplex inepitudes of the semblance; cheerfully wish even lion-soirées, with labels for their lions or without that improvement, all manner of prosperity? Let hero-worship flourish, say we; and the more and more assiduous chase after gilt farthings while guineas are not yet forthcoming. Herein, at lowest, is proof that guineas exist, that they are believed to exist, and valued. Find great men if you can; if you cannot, still quit not the search; in defect of great men, let there be noted men, in such number, to such degree of intensity as the public appetite can tolerate.

Whether Sir Walter Scott was a great man, is still a question with some; but there can be no question with any

one that he was a most noted and even notable man. In this generation there was no literary man with such a popularity in any country; there have only been a few with such, taking-in all generations and all countries. Nay, it is farther to be admitted that Sir Walter Scott's popularity was of a select sort rather; not a popularity of the populace. His admirers were at one time almost all the intelligent of civilised countries; and to the last included, and do still include, a great portion of that sort. Such fortune he had, and has continued to maintain for a space of some twenty or thirty years. So long the observed of all observers; a great man or only a considerable man; here surely, if ever, is a singularly circumstanced, is a 'distinguished man! regard to whom, therefore, the instinctive tendency' on other men's part cannot be wanting. Let men look, where

In

And now, while the

the world has already so long looked. new, earnestly expected Life by his son-in-law and literary executor' again summons the whole world's attention round him, probably for the last time it will ever be so summoned ; and men are in some sort taking leave of a notability, and about to go their way, and commit him to his fortune on the flood of things,-why should not this Periodical Publication likewise publish its thought about him? Readers of miscellaneous aspect, of unknown quantity and quality, are waiting to hear it done. With small inward vocation, but cheerfully obedient to destiny and necessity, the present reviewer will follow a multitude: to do evil or to do no evil, will depend not on the multitude but on himself. One thing he did

decidedly wish; at least to wait till the Work were finished: for the six promised Volumes, as the world knows, have flowed over into a Seventh, which will not for some weeks yet see the light. But the editorial powers, wearied with waiting, have become peremptory; and declare that, finished or not finished, they will have their hands washed of it at this opening of the year. Perhaps it is best. The physiognomy of Scott will not be much altered for us by that Seventh Volume; the