persevering patience and unwearied attention of those favoured few who have endured the heat and suffocation of the day within the four walls of the Court.

This interest is not by any means confined to judicial proceedings arising out of the passing incidents of the day; a similar feeling, though less intense in degree, is produced by the perusal of the trials of former times. The truth is, that they give life and reality, and what may be termed dramatic effect, to the scenes, events and characters of history; the reader fancies himself a step nearer to the actors on the stage; his attention is strongly roused, and a more vivid impression of the facts recited is left on the memory than by the regular narrative of the historian. They exhibit also a singular variety of character under circumstances of difficulty and danger. In the results of many of them were involved not only the fate of the individuals immediately concerned, but the liberties of the whole nation; and they display, in the most impressive form, the energies of great minds powerfully excited by the consciousness of being placed in such momentous extremities. Some of the mortal struggles here recorded present examples of indignant and uncompromising defiance of oppression, with a sacrifice of all considerations of personal safety; in other cases, we meet with instances of affecting and impassioned eloquence; and in others again, of calm, dignified, and persuasive reasoning. We read all of these with something like a romantic interest; the sense of reality never leaves us, and we continually feel that we are looking upon a picture of real life, and not upon a work of the imagination. In this point of view, and with reference to the interest produced by them, Collections of Trials may perhaps be turned to good account in the study of history; for all who have had experience in the business of education

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 most 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

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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.