rian Philosophy, which, when they first appeared, attracted some notice, but which are not in the American editions. He has, however, determined to omit these papers; not because he is disposed to retract a single doctrine which they contain, but because he is unwilling to offer what might be regarded as an affront to the memory of one from whose opinions he still widely dissents, but to whose talent and virtues he admits that he formerly did not do justice. Serious as are the faults of the Essay on Government, a critic, while noticing those faults, should have abstained from using contemptuous language respecting the historian of British India. It ought to be known that Mr. Mill had the generosity, not only to forgive, but to forget the unbecoming acrimony with which he had been assailed, and was when his valuable life closed, on terms of cordial friendship with his assailant.”

The three volumes contain some twenty articles, and just as they at first appeared, excepting such slight alterations and corrections as a more deliberate correction of the proofs would have accomplished when they were sent to the Review. The mode of arrangement is chronological, the papers extending from 1825 to 1842,-a plan which of course affords a very miscellaneous sort of reading, and an opportunity of forming a judgment of the author's progress in improvement and opinion. It is obvious, however, that a more scientific mode might have been adopted, both as regards connexion of subject, and the testing of the writer's talent, range, and manner. Literary criticism might have been thrown into one section; philosophy, politics, and biography, could readily have taken their respective places. Still it is proper to observe, that Mr. Macaulay does not in any case abide very strictly by one method of treatment, or any definite order of disquisition. Indeed, the term Essays will not guide a stranger to a precise idea of the nature of his papers. On almost every occasion he roves at will, and as one who conscious of his abundance, having culled from many rich and flowery fields, loves to display his skill at selection as well as his opulence in respect of possessions. Description, disquisition, narrative, and reflection all commingle,-biography, anecdote, and striking illustration. Indeed, to strike, to dazzle, and to carry captive by means of rhetorical flourish and power, together with a most luminous manner of statement, are Mr. Macaulay's masterley qualities; and prove so attractive that the reader is apt to lose sight of the demands of logical reasoning, and even to overlook errors of doctrine, in his admiration of the delightful manner, and in his subjection to the self-confident and dashing art of the author.

The purpose for which Mr. Macaulay seizes a subject, as well as the manner in which he handles it, may be said to be his own, and also to be the model upon which many of the crack and more popular articles in the larger periodicals have come to be framed. He lays

hold of a text, it may be in the shape of a remarkable individual, a prominent event, or an awakening scene, in order to preach and illustrate a doctrine, give the aspect and characteristics of an epoch, or the fashion of manners social and national of a particular date. He traverses the globe, dips into the volumes of a biographical dictionary, and alights with wilfulness upon far distant eras, to serve the purpose in hand. He theorizes without scruple, dogmatizes without doubt, and frequently asserts with utter recklessness; but never in any one phase of mind or mode of treatment does he fail to charm, to suggest, and to elevate. How otherwise could it happen that while the reader may dissent from his conclusions, and object on the score of logical fairness to his mode of procedure, there is not a paper or a page in these bulky volumes which does not lay hold of the attention and tempt you onward and onward with the spell and delightful fascination of a brilliant romance? Thanks to the American pirates-we are almost ready to offer, for having goaded on the resplendent reviewer to a measure of self-defence, and to this assertion of English rights. Indeed with all its faults of style and eccentricities of view, the collection is admirably fitted not merely to awaken a taste for the higher objects and domain of literature, but to propagate a system of thinking that will guide to sound principles and a philosophic love of the good and the beautiful. Not only is our author's manner of statement singularly luminous and imposing, but he sesses a power and compass in respect of grasp that have rarely been matched. He fills, warms, and carries aloft the mind, but he does more, he imbues it with the desire of careering independently, and even with the conviction that it can walk the heaven of speculation and beatitude unaided and alone.

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It is not our purpose to go into any minute and specific observations with regard to the several or even the more striking papers of the collection. We may mention, however, that in the more historical department we find the lives and times of Lord Burleigh, Hampden, Temple, &c. chosen for texts immediately relating to England. Lord Mahon's War of the Succession serves to lay Europe under contribution at a particular period,-while Warren Hastings affords the Reviewer an opportunity for travelling to India at the era when British sway and power in the East were consolidated. Bacon, Johnson, Bunyan, and others prompt to the employment of the author's biographical reading, learned disquisition, and critical acumen.

Different readers will entertain their respectively different opinions of the collected papers; although, as we have hinted, not one of the articles can come amiss to the eager and the susceptible. But perhaps there is not an article among the whole that evinces in a stronger and more favourable light the powers, acquisitions, manner, and taste of the writer, than that which has Machiavelli for its theme, and in which the Italian of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is pictured. Take a generalizing passage:

A vice sanctioned by the general opinion is merely a vice. The evil terminates in itself. A vice condemned by the general opinion produces a pernicious effect on the whole character. The former is a local malady, the latter a constitutional taint. When the reputation of the offender is lost, he too often flings the remains of his virtue after it in despair. The Highland gentleman who, a century ago, lived by taking black mail from his neighbours, committed the same crime for which Wild was accompanied to Tyburn by the huzzas of two hundred thousand people. But there can be no doubt that he was a much less depraved man than Wild. The deed for which Mrs. Brownrigg was hanged sinks into nothing when compared with the conduct. of the Roman who treated the public to a hundred pair of gladiators. Yet we should greatly wrong such a Roman if we supposed that his disposition was as cruel as that of Mrs. Brownrigg. In our own country, a woman forfeits her place in society by what in a man is too commonly considered as an honourable distinction, and, at worst, as a venial error. The consequence is notorious. The moral principle of a woman is frequently more impaired by a single lapse from virtue than that of a man by twenty years of intrigues. Classical iniquity would furnish us with instances stronger, if possible, than those to which we have referred.

We must apply this principle to the case before us. Habits of dissimulation and falsehood, no doubt, mark a man of our age and country as utterly worthless and abandoned. But it by no means follows that a similar judgment would be just in the case of an Italian of the middle ages.

Now for the application individually :

The character of the Italian statesman seems, at first sight, a collection of contradictions, a phantom as monstrous as the portress of Hell in Miltonhalf divinity, half snake, majestic and beautiful above, grovelling and poisonous below. We see a man whose thoughts and words have no connexion with each other, who never hesitates at an oath when he wishes to seduce, who never wants a pretext when he is inclined to betray. His cruelties spring not from the heat of blood, or the insanity of uncontrolled power, but from deep and cool meditation. His passions, like well-trained troops, are impetuous by rule, and in their most headstrong fury never forget the discipline to which they have been accustomed. His whole soul is occupied with vast and complicated schemes of ambition: yet his aspect and language exhibit nothing but philosophical moderation. Hatred and revenge eat into his heart yet every look is a cordial smile, every gesture a familiar caress. He never excites the suspicion of his adversaries by petty provocations. His purpose is disclosed only when it is accomplished. His face is unruffled, his speech is courteous, till vigilance is laid asleep, till a vital point is exposed, till a sure aim is taken; and then he strikes, for the first and last time. Military courage, the boast of the sottish German, of the frivolous and prating Frenchman, of the romantic and arrogant Spaniard, he neither possesses nor values. He shuns danger, not because he is insensible to shame, but because, in the society in which he lives, timidity has ceased to be shameful. To do any injury openly is, in his estimation, as wicked as to do it secretly, and far less profitable. With him the most honourable means

are those which are the surest, the speediest, and the darkest. He cannot comprehend how a man should scruple to deceive those whom he does not scruple to destroy. He would think it madness to declare open hostilities against rivals whom he might stab in a friendly embrace, or poison in a consecrated wafer.

Yet this man, black with the vices which we consider as most loathsome, traitor, hypocrite, coward, assassin, was by no means destitute even of those virtues which we generally consider as indicating superior elevation of character. In civil courage, in perseverance, in presence of mind, those barbarous warriors, who were foremost in the battle or the breach, were far his inferiors. Even the dangers which he avoided with a caution almost pusillanimous never confused his perceptions, never paralyzed his inventive faculties, never wrung out one secret from his smooth tongue and his inscrutable brow. Though a dangerous enemy, and a still more dangerous accomplice, he could be a just and beneficent ruler. With so much unfairness in his policy, there was an extraordinary degree of fairness in his intellect. Indifferent to truth in the transactions of life, he was honestly devoted to truth in the researches of speculation. Wanton cruelty was not in his nature. On the contrary, where no political object was at stake, his disposition was soft and humane. The susceptibility of his nerves and the activity of his imagination inclined him to sympathize with the feelings of others, and to delight in the charities and courtesies of social life. Perpetually descending to actions which might seem to mark a mind diseased through all its faculties, he had nevertheless an exquisitite sensibility both for the natural and the moral sublime, for every graceful and every lofty conception. Habits of petty intrigue and dissimulation might have rendered him incapable of great general views, but that the expanding effect of his philosophical studies counteracted the narrowing tendency. He had the keenest enjoyment of wit, eloquence, and poetry. The fine arts profited alike by the severity of his judgment and by the liberality of his patronage. The portraits of some of the remarkable Italians of those times are perfectly in harmony with this description. Ample and majestic foreheads, brows strong and dark, but not frowning, eyes of which the calm full gaze while it expresses nothing seems to discern everything, cheeks pale with thought and sedentary habits, lips. formed with feminine delicacy, but compressed with more than masculine decision, mark out men at once enterprising and timid, men equally skilled in detecting the purposes of others, and in concealing their own, men who must have been formidable enemies and unsafe allies, but men, at the same, whose tempers were mild and equable, and who possessed an amplitude and subtlety of intellect which would have rendered them eminent either in active or in contemplative life, and fitted them either to govern or to instruct mankind.

The doctrine deduced from all this disquisition and illustration is the following:

Every age and every nation has certain characteristic vices, which prevail almost universally, which scarcely any person scruples to avow, and which even rigid moralists but faintly censure. Succeeding generations change the fashion of their morals with the fashion of their hats and their

coaches; take some other kind of wickedness under their patronage, and wonder at the depravity of their ancestors.

Dr. Johnson's history, times, and experience, give rise to a display in another field, and where we find the manner of statement and of marshalling names as well as circumstances no less vigorous, luminous, and skilful :

:

Johnson came up to London precisely at the time when the condition of a man of letters was most miserable and degraded. It was a dark night between two sunny days. The age of patronage had passed away, the age of general curiosity and intelligence had not arrived. The number of readers is at present so great, that a popular author may subsist in comfort and opulence on the profits of his works. In the reigns of William the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, even such men as Congreve and Addison would scarcely have been able to live like gentlemen by the mere sale of their writings. But the deficiency of the natural demand for literature was, at the close of the seventeenth and at the beginning of the eighteenth century, more than made up by artificial encouragement, by a vast system of bounties and premium. There was, perhaps, never a time at which the rewards of literary merit were so splendid, at which men who could write well found such easy admittance into the most distinguished The chiefs of both the society, and to the highest honours of the state. great parties into which the kingdom was divided patronized literature with emulous munificence. Congreve, when he had scarcely attained his majority, was rewarded for his first comedy with places which made him independent for life. Smith, though his Hippolytus and Phædra failed, would have been consoled with 300l. a year but for his own folly. Rowe was not only Poet Laureate, but also land-surveyor of the Customs in the port of London, Clerk of the Council to the Prince of Wales, and Secretary of the Presentations to the Lord Chancellor. Hughes was Secretary to the Commissions of the Peace. Ambrose Philips was Judge of the Prerogative Court in Ireland. Locke was Commissioner of Appeals and of the Board of Trade. Newton was Master of the Mint. Stepney and Prior were ployed in embassies of high dignity and importance. Gay, who commenced life as apprentice to a silk-mercer, became a Secretary of Legation at fiveand-twenty. It was to a poem on the Death of Charles the Second, and to the City and Country Mouse, that Montague owed his introduction into public life, his earldom, his garter, and his Auditorship of the Exchequer. Swift, but for the unconquerable prejudice of the Queen, would have been a Bishop. Oxford, with his white staff in his hand, passed through the crowd of his suitors to welcome Parnell when that ingenious writer deserted the Whigs. Steele was a Commissioner of Stamps and a Member of Parlia ment. Arthur Mainwaring was a Commissioner of the Customs and Auditor of the Imprest. Tickell was Secretary to the Lords Justices of Ireland. Addison was Secretary of State.

And now for a contrast as drawn by Mr. Macaulay :

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At the time when Johnson commenced his literary career, a writer had little to hope from the patronage of powerful individuals. The patronage of