great assiduity. His perception was clear and acute, his judgment solid and decisive; he possessed a refined taste for the liberal arts, and was a munificent patron to those who excelled in painting, sculpture, music, and architecture. In his private morals he was unblemished and exemplary. He was merciful, modest, chaste, temperate, religious, personally brave; and we may join with the noble historian in saying,' he was the worthiest gentleman, the best master, the best friend, the best husband, the best father, and the best Christian, of the age in which he lived.' He had the misfortune to be bred up in high notions of the prerogative, which he thought his honour and his duty obilged him to maintain. He lived at a time when the spirit of the people became too mighty for those restraints which the regal power derived from the constitution; and when the tide of fanaticism began to overbear the religion of his country, to which he was conscientiously devoted. He suffered himself to be guided by counsellors who were not only inferior to himself in knowledge and judgment, but generally proud, partial, and inflexible; and from an excess of conjugal affection, that bordered upon weakness, he paid too much deference to the advice and desire of his consort, who was superstitiously attached to the errors of popery, and importuned him incessantly in favour of the Roman Catholics. Such were the sources of that misgovernment which was imputed to him during the first fifteen years of his reign. From the beginning of the civil war to his fatal catastrophe, his conduct seems to have been unexceptionable. His infirmities and imperfections have been candidly owned in the course of the narration. He was not very liberal to his dependents; his conversation was not easy, nor his address pleasing; yet the probity of his heart and the innocence of his manners won the affection of all who attended his person, not even excepting those who had the charge of his confinement. In a word, he certainly deserved the epithet of a virtuous prince, though he wanted some of those shining qualities which constitute the character of a great monarch." Character of Oliver Cromwell. His "Oliver was of a robust make and constitution, and his aspect was manly, though clownish. His education extended no further than a superficial knowledge of the Latin tongue, but he inherited great talents from nature; though they were such as he could not have exerted to advantage at any other juncture than that of a civil war, inflamed by religious contests. character was formed from an amazing conjunction of enthusiasm, hypocrisy, and ambition. He was possessed of courage and resolution that overlooked all danger and saw no difficulty. He dived into the characters of mankind with wonderful sagacity, while he concealed his own purposes under the impenetrable shield of dissimulation. He reconciled the most atrocious crimes to the most rigid notions of religious obligation. From the severest exercise of devotion he relaxed into the most ludicrous and idle buffoonery. He preserved the dignity and distance of his character in the midst of the coarsest familiarity. He was cruel and tyrannical, from policy; just and temperate, from inclination; perplexed and despicable in his discourse; clear and consummate in his designs; ridiculous in his reveries; respectable in his conduct: in a word, the strangest compound of villainy and virtue, baseness and magnanimity, absurdity and good sense, that we find upon record in the annals of mankind." Character of Charles the Second. "Charles the Second was in his person tall and swarthy, and his countenance marked with strong, harsh lineaments. His penetration was keen, his judgment clear, his understanding extensive, his conversation lively and entertaining, and he possessed the talent of wit and ridicule. He was easy of access, polite, and affable; had he been limited to a private station, he would have passed for the most agreeable and best-natured man of the age in which he lived. His greatest enemies allow him to have been a civil husband and obliging lover, an affectionate father and an indulgent master; even as a prince he manifested an aversion to cruelty and injustice. Yet these good qualities were more than overbalanced by his weakness and defects. He was a scoffer at religion, and a libertine in his morals; careless, indolent, profuse, abandoned to effeminate pleasure, incapable of any noble enterprize, a stranger to manly friendship and gratitude; deaf to the voice of honour, blind to the allurements of glory, and, in a word, wholly destitute of every active virtue. Being himself unprincipled, he believed mankind were false, perfidious, and interested; and therefore he practised dissimulation for his own convenience. He was strongly attached to the French manners, government, and monarch: he was dissatisfied with his own limited prerogative. The majority of his own subjects he despised or hated, as hypocrites, fanatics, and republicans, who had persecuted his father and himself, and sought the destruction of the monarchy. In these sentiments he could not be supposed to pursue the interest of the nation; on the contrary, he seemed to think that his own safety was incompatible with the honour and advantage of his people. Had he been an absolute prince, the subjects would have found themselves quiet and happy under a mild administration; but harassed, as he was by a powerful opposition, and perplexed with perpetual indigence, he thought himself obliged, for his own ease and security, to prosecute measures which rendered his reign a misfortune to the kingdom, and entailed upon him the contempt of all the other powers in Europe. Yet that misfortune did not immediately affect the nation in its commercial concerns. Trade and manufactures flourished more in this reign than at any other æra of the English monarchy. Industry was crowned with success, and the people in general lived in ease and affluence." We shall conclude with the following summary of the qualifications required in an historian. His learning, says Bayle, should be greater than his genius, and his judgment stronger than his imagination. In private life, he should have the character of being free from party, and his former writings ought always to have shewn the sincerest attachment to truth. I ask several questions, says the same author, who the historian is? of what country? of what principles ? for it is impossible but that his private opinions will almost involuntarily work themselves into his public performances. His style also should be clear, elegant, and nervous. And lastly, to give him a just boldness of sentiment and expression, he should have a consciousness of these his superior abilities. As to the first requisites, how far our author is possessed of them, his former productions will abundantly demonstrate; but in the last, he seems to have fallen short of none of his predecessors. (1) (1) ["It is said that this voluminous work, containing the history of thirteen centuries, and written with uncommon spirit and correctness of language, was composed and finished for the press within fourteen months; one of the greatest exertions of facility of composition ever recorded in the history of literature. Within a space so brief it could not be expected that new facts should be produced; and all the novelty which Smollett's history could present must needs consist in the mode of stating facts, or in the reflections to be deduced from them. In this work, the author fully announced his political principles, which, notwithstanding his Whig education, were those of a modern Tory, and a favourer of the monarchical part of our constitution. For such a strain of sentiment, some readers will think no apology necessary; and by others none which we might propose would be listened to. Smollett has made his own defence, in a letter to Dr. Moore, dated 2d January 1758. He says: 'I desire you will divest yourself of prejudice, at least as much as you can, before you begin to peruse it, and consider well the facts before you pass judgment. Whatever may be the defects of my work, I protest before God I have, as far as in me lay, adhered to truth, without espousing any faction, though I own I sat down to write with a warm side to those principles in which I was educated; but in the course of my inquiries, some of the Whig ministers turned out such a set of sordid knaves, that I could not help stigmatising them for their want of integrity and sentiment.'"-Sir WALTER SCOTT, Prose Works, vol. iii. p.148.] II. CHARLEVOIX'S HISTORY OF PARAGUAY. [From the Monthly Review, 1757. "Histoire du Paraguay, par Le Père François Xavier de Charlevoix, (1) de la Compagnie de Jésus." Paris, 3 vol. 4to. 1756.] THE pleasure we find in modern history arises either from the accuracy and veracity of the historian, or from our being unacquainted with the country he describes. In this last respect we look upon the accounts of the traveller as new discoveries, and, in some measure, pardon any improbabilities, by considering the hazards he must have encountered, in procuring us any information whatsoever. Of all accounts, those of the missionaries, as they depart most from truth, stand most in need of this indulgence: the dangers they have undergone should be set in the opposite scale, against the improbabilities they relate; and though we cannot allow them the praise of having given us good accounts, yet it is some merit in them to have given at least some account. We are certainly obliged to them for bringing us acquainted with countries, which the badness of climate, the difficulty of access, or the unfavourable disposition of the inhabitants, would still conceal from those whose only motives to a knowledge of them were curiosity or avarice. But such is in general the credulity of those religious adventurers, or so much do they endeavour to impose upon ours, that we often wish they who pretend to teach others the truth, had been better acquainted with it themselves. (1) [This learned and industrious Jesuit was born at St. Quentin, in 1684, and died in 1761. He was for some years a missionary in America. His fame rests chiefly on the histories of his travels, which were extensive, and his accounts, though diffuse, are in general considered good authority. He was for twenty-four years employed on the Journal de Trévoux, which he enriched with many valuable articles.-Bib. Univ.] What has been said of the relations of the missionaries in general may with propriety, be applied to the author of this performance: a work rather calculated to defend the Jesuit missionaries from the reproach of avarice, or of disaffection to their temporal sovereigns, than to give us a distinct view of a country hitherto so little known. It is hard to say, whether the natural or the civil history of Paraguay, as related by this author, most abounds with improbability. In the one, we are told of birds fighting with serpents, and, upon being wounded, having recourse to an herb, which immediately heals the wound, and gives them strength to renew the combat: also of serpents, who, having swallowed more than they can digest, turn their bellies to the sun, which rotting the skin, the birds light upon, and carry away the remains of the surfeit, and thereby restore health to the reptile. In the other, we hear of missionaries miraculously cured of mortal wounds, travelling twelve days' journey in less than one; bringing down rain; and routing armies at the word of command. Yet, in spite of all this absurdity, the subject is no less curious than uncommon; and some readers, no doubt, may be pleased with an extract from those parts of the history less chargeable with the idle tales above hinted at. Paraguay (so called from a river of that name) is bounded on the north by the lake des Xarayes, and the provinces of Santa Cruz and Charcas; on the south by the straits of Magellan; on the east by Brazil; and on the north by Chili and Peru. It must not be supposed (says the author) but that in a country of such vast extent, watered by an infinite number of rivers, covered with immense forests, and chains of mountains of an almost immeasurable length, some of which lift themselves above the clouds; in a country where valleys are all subject to inundations more extensive and lasting than are to be met |