will admit, that one of the greatest difficulties in all branches of learning is overcome, when the attention of the student is once thoroughly excited, and his interest powerfully awakened towards the subject before him.

But the State Trials are also extremely valuable by the addition they furnish to the stock of facts from which the historian may draw his materials with security. Unfortunately, no great dependence is in general to be placed upon the truth of those circumstances with which the outlines of history are usually filled up. Great and leading events may well be presumed to be known to contemporaries, and are, therefore, received upon their testimony with undoubting confidence; but minute anecdotes founded on flying reports, not personally vouched for by the relaters; transient conversations and speeches not noted, and liable to be misunderstood by those who heard them, repeated with one variation after another, till the originals are completely lost, cannot be entitled to the same ready belief. And yet it is often upon these less authentic circumstances that our judgment both of characters and events is formed, and in them the charm of history in a great measure consists; for certainly, if they be taken away, history is literally reduced" ad maciem et ossa." It is on this ground that personal narratives, state papers, auto-biographies, and original letters, are read with so much satisfaction, and are highly valued, not only as giving the charm of reality, and illustrating, in the ost attractive manner, the times to which they refer, but as authentic sources from which the details of history may be drawn. Trials may be usefully subservient to history upon the same principle. It must be admitted, indeed, that Reports of the Proceedings on State Prosecutions in early periods of our history are full of inaccuracies, arising

from the imperfection of the art of reporting, and from the frequent interference of the government to prevent the publication of a true statement of them; still they must necessarily contain much truth; and the later trials, except in professional and merely technical matters, are not open to the same objection. Of the authenticity of modern trials there can be no reasonable suspicion, for they are, in general, merely formal narrations, made at the time by disinterested persons, and often published without note or comment by the express authority of the courts in which the proceedings occurred. As far, therefore, as relates to the conduct of the parties, and every thing that took place on such trials, the truth of the report may in most cases be relied upon with confidence.

The reader of the State Trials has also the satisfaction of seeing, to a certain extent at least, with his own eyes, and judging for himself, without any danger of being misled by the false colouring or distorted statements of prejudice or party. Partiality and prejudice in historians are the bane of all science which depends upon the examples of former times. The same facts and circumstances are often, from this cause, so differently represented by different writers, that their relations, if given without names or dates, would hardly be recognized as descriptive of the same transactions; and, unfortunately, it is invariably with respect to the most important and interesting periods of history, that party-spirit is excited, and misrepresentation most commonly occurs. Amongst modern historians, in particular, it is very common to find writers setting out upon their task with certain preconceived opinions, the support of which is the sole object, and sometimes the avowed motive, of their writing. An historian of this kind is always a partisan; his understanding is incapacitated

for the task of weighing the evidence of facts, by the eagerness with which he catches at those only which support his own theories, while he shapes and fashions, and too often tortures, others into a consistency with them. When it is considered how many thousands of readers necessarily derive their knowledge of facts from the statements of the historian, not having leisure or opportunity to search and examine for themselves, the mischief done by these philosophical writers, as they are sometimes called, becomes apparent. There is scarcely any fault in an historian which is so pernicious. Nor is it only party-spirit in the historian which leads both himself and his reader astray; inconsistent as it may appear with the dignity and duty of writers of this class, the love of ornament, and the desire to dress up a story or character, has frequently occasioned the unqualified statement of circumstances, known by the writer to be false, or the total suppression of facts believed by him to be true. A curious instance of this kind of misstatement of a fact, very immaterial in itself, occurs in Hume's History of England, and is detected by Mr. Laing in his History of Scotland. Hume states, that " every night during the interval between the sentence and execution of Charles I., the king slept sound as usual, though the noise of the workmen employed in framing the scaffold, and other preparations for his execution, continually resounded in his ears." The whole story is said to be a fiction, first related by Clement Walker in his History of Independency;' for Herbert, who attended the king's person, and slept in his chamber from the beginning of his trial to the last hour of his life, and who relates every thing that took place in that interval with great minuteness, does not mention this remarkable act of indecency, and states, on the contrary, that the king was removed from Whitehall to St. James's immedi

ately after his trial*. But the most extraordinary circumstance is, that in the copy of Herbert's Memoirs in the Advocates' Library, the very passage in which this statement is made is marked by Mr. Hume's pencil. The detection of a false statement of this kind, though in a circumstance totally immaterial, destroys the confidence of the reader, and creates an impression that in more important matters he is reading not a faithful relation of facts, but a cunningly devised fable,-not a history, but a romance. It is conceived that the perusal of State Trials has a tendency to counteract, in some degree, the evils arising from the partiality of historians. Fortunately, reports of the proceedings on state prosecutions, on most great occasions in the history of England since the time of Henry VIII., are preserved; the earlier trials, including those arising out of the prosecutions for denying the king's supremacy in the reign of Henry VIII., and the Popish plots in the reigns of Elizabeth and James I., are, indeed, meagre and imperfect, though they are capable of being rendered much more intelligible by a reference to state papers and other original documents; but the reports of Trials in the reign of Charles I., and during the Commonwealth, are tolerably complete; and from the Restoration to the present time, a period embracing the important events of the Popish plot, the Assassination plots in the reign of William and Mary, and the Rebellion of 1745, the trials are,

* Mr. D'Israeli, in a note to his Commentaries on the Life and Writings of Charles I.,' refers to some authorities, lately published, which make it probable that Herbert was mistaken as to this fact, and that the king remained for two days after his trial at Whitehall. There is every reason to believe, however, that Hume could not have seen these authorities; and if so, he could have had no motive beyond the desire of adding to the interest of his history, for preferring the statement of Walker to the positive and distinct declaration of Herbert.

for the most part, reported in detail, with question and answer. In general, notwithstanding the imperfections of many of them, the state trials will be found to supply copious illustration of the periods of history to which they relate; furnishing, in some instances, the means of filling up outlines which are otherwise incomplete; in others, of tracing the small and almost unperceived causes of great revolutions; and in innumerable cases, destroying popular prejudices respecting the characters of individuals, and placing in their true light the causes and motives of their actions.

Trials are also useful and entertaining, as denoting in some degree the character of the times in which they occur, the manners and habits of the people, and the quantity of intelligence existing amongst them at different periods of their history. The advantage to be derived from them in this respect is, without doubt, limited in its extent, and must be estimated with caution; for daily experience shows that civilization may prevail to a great extent in political communities, before it reaches their courts of justice. Generally speaking, however, a criminal trial must always contain, to some extent, a portrait of the times in which it occurs, in the conduct and demeanour of the judges, jury, counsel, and witnesses, as well as in the general character of the proceeding.

The practical development of the improvements in our criminal law, and the general administration of justice, and of the advantages which the liberty of the subject has derived from those improvements, cannot fail to be an object of strong interest to the English reader. In this respect at least, it will appear from the State Trials, that the reverence for ' venerable antiquity," so much cherished by some writers, is altogether a delusion, and that those who

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