infamy For more than two hundred | mighty battle, to invest with the reality years his bones lay undistinguished. of human flesh and blood beings whom At length, an English nobleman paid we are too much inclined to consider the last honours to the greatest states- as personified qualities in an allegory, man of Florence. In the church of to call up our ancestors before us with Santa Croce a monument was erected all their peculiarities of language, manto his memory, which is contemplated ners, and garb, to show us over their with reverence by all who can dis- houses, to seat us at their tables, to tinguish the virtues of a great mind rummage their old-fashioned wardthrough the corruptions of a dege- robes, to explain the uses of their ponnerate age, and which will be ap- derous furniture, these parts of the proached with still deeper homage when duty which properly belongs to the the object to which his public life was historian have been appropriated by devoted shall be attained, when the the historical novelist. On the other foreign yoke shall be broken, when a hand, to extract the philosophy of second Procida shall avenge the wrongs history, to direct our judgment of events of Naples, when a happier Rienzi shall and men, to trace the connection of restore the good estate of Rome, when causes and effects, and to draw from the streets of Florence and Bologna the occurrences of former times general shall again resound with their ancient lessons of moral and political wisdom, war-cry, Popolo; popolo; muoiano i has become the business of a distinct tiranni! class of writers.

Of the two kinds of composition into which history has been thus divided, the one may be compared to a map, the other to a painted landscape. The picture, though it places the country before us, does not enable us to ascertain with accuracy the dimensions, the distances, and the angles. The map is not a work of imitative art. It presents no scene to the imagination; but it gives us exact information as to the bearings of the various points, and is a more use ful companion to the traveller or the general than the painted landscape could be, though it were the grandest that ever Rosa peopled with outlaws, or the sweetest over which Claude ever poured the mellow effulgence of a setting sun.

HISTORY, at least in its state of ideal perfection, is a compound of poetry and philosophy. It impresses general truths on the mind by a vivid representation of particular characters and incidents. But, in fact, the two hostile elements of which it consists have never been known to form a perfect amalgamation; and at length, in our own time, they have been completely and professedly separated. Good histories, in the proper It is remarkable that the practice of sense of the word, we have not. But separating the two ingredients of which we have good historical romances, and history is composed has become pregood historical essays. The imagina-valent on the Continent as well as in tion and the reason, if we may use a this country. Italy has already prolegal metaphor, have made partition of duced a historical novel, of high merit a province of literature of which they and of still higher promise. In France, were formerly seized per my et per tout; the practice has been carried to a length and now they hold their respective por- somewhat whimsical. M. Sismondi tions in severalty, instead of holding publishes a grave and stately history the whole in common. of the Merovingian Kings, very valuTo make the past present, to bring able, and a little tedious. He then the distant near, to place us in the sends forth as a companion to it a novel, society of a great man or on the emi-in which he attempts to give a lively nence which overlooks the field of a representation of characters and man

ners.

This course, as it seems to us, | The language, even where most faulty, has all the disadvantages of a division is weighty and massive, and indicates of labour, and none of its advantages. strong sense in every line. It often We understand the expediency of rises to an eloquence, not florid or imkeeping the functions of cook and passioned, but high, grave, and sober; coachman distinct. The dinner will be such as would become a state paper, or better dressed, and the horses better a judgment delivered by a great magismanaged. But where the two situations trate, a Somers or a D'Aguesseau. are united, as in the Maître Jacques of Molière, we do not see that the matter is much mended by the solemn form with which the pluralist passes from one of his employments to the other. We manage these things better in England. Sir Walter Scott gives us a novel; Mr. Hallam a critical and argumentative history. Both are occupied with the same matter. But the former looks at it with the eye of a sculptor. His intention is to give an express and lively image of its external form. The latter is an anatomist. His task is to dissect the subject to its inmost recesses, and to lay bare before us all the springs of motion and all the causes of decay.

Mr. Hallam is, on the whole, far better qualified than any other writer of our time for the office which he has undertaken. He has great industry and great acuteness. His knowledge is extensive, various, and profound. His mind is equally distinguished by the amplitude of its grasp, and by the delicacy of its tact. His speculations have none of that vagueness which is the common fault of political philosophy. On the contrary, they are strikingly practical, and teach us not only the general rule, but the mode of applying it to solve particular cases. In this respect they often remind us of the Discourses of Machiavelli.

The style is sometimes open to the charge of harshness. We have also here and there remarked a little of that unpleasant trick, which Gibbon brought into fashion, the trick, we mean, of telling a story by implication and allusion. Mr. Hallam, however, has an excuse which Gibbon had not. His work is designed for readers who are already acquainted with the ordinary books on English history, and who can therefore unriddle these little enigmas without difficulty. The manner of the book is, on the whole, not unworthy of the matter.

In this respect the character of Mr. Hallam's mind corresponds strikingly with that of his style. His work is eminently judicial. Its whole spirit is that of the bench, not that of the bar. He sums up with a calm, steady impartiality, turning neither to the right nor to the left, glossing over nothing, exaggerating nothing, while the advocates on both sides are alternately biting their lips to hear their conflicting misstatements and sophisms exposed. On a general survey, we do not scruple to pronounce the Constitutional History the most impartial book that we ever read. We think it the more incumbent on us to bear this testimony strongly at first setting out, because, in the course of our remarks, we shall think it right to dwell principally on those parts of it from which we dissent.

There is one peculiarity about Mr. Hallam which, while it adds to the value of his writings, will, we fear, take away something from their popularity. He is less of a worshipper than any historian whom we can call to mind. Every political sect has its esoteric and its exoteric school, its abstract doctrines for the initiated, its visible symbols, its imposing forms, its mythological fables for the vulgar. It assists the devotion of those who are unable to raise themselves to the contemplation of pure truth by all the devices of Pagan or Papal superstition. It has its altars and its deified heroes, its relics and pilgrimages, its canonized martyrs and confessors, its festivals and its legendary miracles. Our pious ancestors, we are told, deserted the High Altar of Canterbury, to lay all their oblations on the shrine of St. Thomas. In the same manner the great and com fortable doctrines of the Tory creed, those particularly which relate to restrictions on worship and on trade, are adored by squires and rectors in Pitt

of goods, or a friend to order without taking under his protection the foulest excesses of tyranny. His admiration oscillates between the most worthless of rebels and the most worthless of oppressors, between Marten, the disgrace of the High Court of Justice, and Laud, the disgrace of the Star Chamber. He can forgive any thing but temperance and impartiality. He has a certain sympathy with the violence of his opponents, as well as with that of his as

altogether untinctured with cynicism, but free from the slightest touch of passion, party spirit, or caprice.

Clubs, under the name of a minister who was as bad a representative of the system which has been christened after him as Becket of the spirit of the Gospel. On the other hand, the cause for which Hampden bled on the field and Sydney on the scaffold is enthusiastically toasted by many an honest radical who would be puzzled to explain the difference between Shipmoney and the Habeas Corpus Act. It may be added that, as in religion, so in politics, few even of those who are en-sociates. In every furious partisan he lightened enough to comprehend the sees either his present self or his former meaning latent under the emblems of self, the pensioner that is, or the Jacotheir faith can resist the contagion of bin that has been. But he is unable to the popular superstition. Often, when comprehend a writer who, steadily atthey flatter themselves that they are tached to principles, is indifferent about merely feigning a compliance with the names and badges, and who judges of prejudices of the vulgar, they are them-characters with equable severity, not selves under the influence of those very prejudices. It probably was not altogether on grounds of expediency that Socrates taught his followers to honour the gods whom the state honoured, and bequeathed a cock to Esculapius with his dying breath. So there is often a portion of willing credulity and enthusiasm in the veneration which the most discerning men pay to their political idols. From the very nature of man it must be so. The faculty by which we inseparably associate ideas which have often been presented to us in conjunction is not under the absolute control of the will. It may be quickened into morbid activity. It may be reasoned into sluggishness. But in a certain degree it will always exist. The almost absolute mastery which Mr. Hallam has obtained over feelings of this class is perfectly astonishing to us, and will, we believe, be not only astonishing but offensive to many of his readers. It must particularly disgust those people who, in their speculations on politics, are not reasoners but fanciers; whose opinions, even when sincere, are not produced, according to the ordinary law of intellectual births, by induction or inference, but are equivocally gene-rance, but by political necessity. Even rated by the heat of fervid tempers out of the overflowing of tumid imaginations. A man of this class is always in extremes. He cannot be a friend to liberty without calling for a community

We should probably like Mr. Hallam's book more if, instead of pointing out with strict fidelity the bright points and the dark spots of both parties, he had exerted himself to whitewash the one and to blacken the other. But we should certainly prize it far less. Eulogy and invective may be had for the asking. But for cold rigid justice, the one weight and the one measure, we know not where else we can look.

No portion of our annals has been more perplexed and misrepresented by writers of different parties than the history of the Reformation. In this labyrinth of falsehood and sophistry the guidance of Mr. Hallam is peculiarly valuable. It is impossible not to admire the even-handed justice with which he deals out castigation to right and left on the rival persecutors.

It is vehemently maintained by some writers of the present day that Elizabeth persecuted neither Papists nor Puritans as such, and that the severe measures which she occasionally adopted were dictated, not by religious intole

the excellent account of those times which Mr. Hallam has given has not altogether imposed silence on the authors of this fallacy. The title of the Queen, they say, was annulled by the

Pope; her throne was given to another; | fered, not from those which they had her subjects were incited to rebellion; committed, that the existence of disher life was menaced; every Catholic content among them must be inferred. was bound in conscience to be a traitor; There were libels, no doubt, and proit was therefore against traitors, not|phecies, and rumours, and suspicions, against Catholics, that the penal laws strange grounds for a law inflicting were enacted. capital penalties, ex post facto, on a large body of men.

In order that our readers may be fully competent to appreciate the merits of this defence, we will state, as concisely as possible, the substance of some of these laws.

As soon as Elizabeth ascended the throne, and before the least hostility to her government had been shown by the Catholic population, an act passed prohibiting the celebration of the rites of the Romish Church on pain of forfeiture for the first offence, of a year's imprisonment for the second, and of perpetual imprisonment for the third.

Eight years later, the bull of Pius deposing Elizabeth produced a third law. This law, to which alone, as we conceive, the defence now under our consideration can apply, provides that, if any Catholic shall convert a Protestant to the Romish Church, they shall both suffer death as for high treason.

We believe that we might safely content ourselves with stating the fact, and leaving it to the judgment of every plain Englishman. Recent controversies have, however, given so much importance to this subject, that we will offer a few remarks on it.

In the first place, the arguments which are urged in favour of Elizabeth apply with much greater force to the case of her sister Mary. The Catholics did not, at the time of Elizabeth's acces sion, rise in arms to seat a Pretender on her throne. But before Mary had given, or could give, provocation, the most distinguished Protestants attempted to set aside her rights in favour of the Lady Jane. That attempt, and the subsequent insurrection of Wyatt furnished at least as good a plea for the burning of Protestants, as the conspiracies against Elizabeth furnish for the hanging and embowelling of Papists.

A law was next made in 1562, enacting, that all who had ever graduated at the Universities or received holy orders, all lawyers, and all magistrates, should take the oath of supremacy when tendered to them, on pain of forfeiture and imprisonment during the royal pleasure. After the lapse of three months, the oath might again be tendered to them; and, if it were again refused, the recusant was guilty of high treason. A prospective law, however severe, framed to exclude Catholics from the liberal professions, would have been mercy itself compared with this odious act. It is a retrospective statute; it is a retrospective penal statute; it is a retrospective penal statute against a large class. We will The fact is that both pleas are not positively affirm that a law of this worthless alike. If such arguments description must always, and under all are to pass current, it will be easy to eircumstances, be unjustifiable. But prove that there was never such a the presumption against it is most thing as religious persecution since violent; nor do we remember any crisis, the creation. For there never was a either in our own history, or in the religious persecution in which some history of any other country, which odious crime was not, justly or unwould have rendered such a provi- justly, said to be obviously deducible sion necessary. In the present case, from the doctrines of the persecuted what circumstances called for extraor- party. We might say, that the Cæsars dinary rigour ? There might be dis- did not persecute the Christians; that affection among the Catholics. The they only punished men who were prohibition of their worship would na- charged, rightly or wrongly, with burnturally produce it. But it is from ing Rome, and with committing the their situation, not from their conduct, foulest abominations in secret assemfrom the wrongs which they had suf-blies; and that the refusal to throw

generally thought that licentiousness and cruelty of the worst description are likely to be the fruits, as they often have been the fruits, of Antinomian opinions. This chain of reasoning, we think, is as perfect in all its parts as that which makes out a Papist to be necessarily a traitor. Yet it would be rather a strong measure to hang all the Calvinists, on the ground that, if they were spared, they would infallibly commit all the atrocities of Matthias and Knipperdoling. For,

frankincense on the altar of Jupiter was not the crime, but only evidence of the crime. We might say, that the massacre of St. Bartholomew was intended to extirpate, not a religious sect, but a political party. For, beyond all doubt, the proceedings of the Huguenots, from the conspiracy of Amboise to the battle of Moncontour, had given much more trouble to the French monarchy than the Catholics have ever given to the English monarchy since the Reformation; and that too with much less excuse. The true distinction is perfectly ob-reason the matter as we may, experivious. To punish a man because he ence shows us that a man may believe has committed a crime, or because he in election without believing in reprois believed, though unjustly, to have committed a crime, is not persecution. To punish a man, because we infer from the nature of some doctrine which he holds, or from the conduct of other persons who hold the same doctrines with him, that he will commit a crime, is persecution, and is, in every case, foolish and wicked.

bation, that he may believe in reprobation without being an Antinomian, and that he may be an Antinomian without being a bad citizen. Man, in short, is so inconsistent a creature that it is impossible to reason from his beliet to his conduct, or from one part of his belief to another.

We do not believe that every EnWhen Elizabeth put Ballard and glishman who was reconciled to the Babington to death, she was not per- Catholic Church would, as a necessary secuting. Nor should we have accused consequence, have thought himself her government of persecution for pass-justified in deposing or assassinating ing any law, however severe, against Elizabeth. It is not sufficient to say overt acts of sedition. But to argue that the convert must have acknowthat, because a man is a Catholic, he must think it right to murder a heretical sovereign, and that because he thinks it right he will attempt to do it, and then, to found on this conclusion a law for punishing him as if he had done it, is plain persecution.

If, indeed, all men reasoned in the same manner on the same data, and always did what they thought it their duty to do, this mode of dispensing punishment might be extremely judicious. But as people who agree about premises often disagree about conclusions, and as no man in the world acts up to his own standard of right, there are two enormous gaps in the logic by which alone penalties for opinions can be defended. The doctrine of reprobation, in the judgment of many very able men, follows by syllogistic, necessity from the doctrine of election. Others conceive that the Antinomian heresy directly follows from the doctrine of reprobation; and it is very

ledged the authority of the Pope, and that the Pope had issued a bull against the Queen. We know through what strange loopholes the human mind contrives to escape, when it wishes to avoid a disagreeable inference from an admitted proposition. We know how long the Jansenists contrived to believe the Pope infallible in matters of doctrine, and at the same time to believe doctrines which he pronounced to be heretical. Let it pass, however, that every Catholic in the kingdom thought that Elizabeth might be lawfully murdered. Still the old maxim, that what is the business of everybody is the business of nobody, is particularly likely to hold good in a case in which a cruel death is the almost inevitable consequence of making any attempt.

Of the ten thousand clergymen of the Church of England, there is scarcely one who would not say that a man who should leave his country and friends to preach the Gospel among