all sides it became quite evident that our glory was departing." Surely Mr. Grenville would have been too happy to make Alison a Secretary of State, and his own right-hand man, had they but been condoling contemporaries. He would have made the most of Alison's eloquent warnings as to the mournful parallels that obtain between the culmination and decay of individual life and of national life, of the man and of the state. Let us rather hope with Edmund Burke, that there may be fallacy in the speculative assumption that necessarily, and by the constitution of things, all states have the same periods of infancy, manhood, and decrepitude that are found in the individuals who compose them. "Parallels of this sort," said Burke, "rather furnish similitudes to illustrate or to adorn, than supply analogies from whence to reason. The objects which are attempted to be forced into an analogy are not found in the same classes of existence. ... Commonwealths are not physical but moral essences." And though it is right that nations, as well as individual men, should not be high-minded but fear, and while thinking they stand to take heed lest they fall, and while rejoicing in prosperity to rejoice with trembling,we will trust, from current evidences of national spirit, principle, and honour, pace Sir Archibald Alison and his tabular testimonies per contrà, that old England is not yet going, going, gone, to the dogs; but retains stamina enough to survive, and by surviving to refute, his elegiac

statistics.

Passing from characteristic matter to characteristic manner, we must own that we have met with admirers of Alison's style. They even avowed themselves fascinated thereby to go on with him to the Finis of vol. xx. Good souls, we envied their unbilious temperament. Dr. Arnold insists on the impression produced by an historian's style as a thing by no means to be despised, in deciding upon his historical merits. If the style, says Arnold, is heavy and cumbrous, it indicates either a dull man, or a pompous man, or at least a slow and awkward man; if it be tawdry and full of commonplaces enunciated with great solemnity, the writer is most likely a silly man.* That the "Historian of Europe -a title imposingly pompous-is something pompous, is by some affirmed, and by many assumed. That he is a dull man, only faction or prejudice will aver, except with saving clauses, or in a perversion of the term dulness from its popular usage. That he is a silly man is à fortiori an untenable proposition—a pons asinorum it would prove to the sillybillies who might attempt to demonstrate it. Nevertheless, though questionably pompous, only occasionally dull, and in no allowable sense silly, our historian's style is often "heavy," not very rarely "cumbrous," and in countless instances is "tawdry and full of commonplaces enunciated with great solemnity." So tawdry, that the tasteless are enraptured. So commonplace that the commonalty are charmed. So solemn that the stolid are awed and overpowered.

Gibbon has recorded in a passage immortal as his History, the time and place of his "inspired" resolve to narrate the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Sir Archibald Alison has indited a similar passage on his own account, and wrought it up into the body of his narrative; similar at least in scope, not in form or substance; for Alison is no Gibbon, and

*Arnold's Lectures on Modern History, viii.

never less so than when imitating him-just as his being no Macaulay is never more decisively shown, than when he essays a tableau* which might resemble what it copies, were not Macaulay's brush, colours, outline, filling-up, relief, and general keeping, all found wanting. The place was Paris, and the time was May, 1814, when the "Historian of Europe" was moved to undertake his imposing enterprise. "Among the countless multitude whom the extraordinary events of the period had drawn together from every part of Europe to the French capital, and the brilliancy of this spectacle had concentrated in one spot, was one young man who had watched with intense interest the progress of the war from his earliest years, and who, having hurried from his paternal roof in Edinburgh on the first cessation of hostilities, then conceived the first idea of narrating its events; and amidst its wonders inhaled that ardent spirit, that deep enthusiasm, which, sustaining him through fifteen subsequent years of travelling and study, and fifteen more of composition, has at length realised itself in the present history." This it is, then, that comes of inhaling ardent spirits; even thus does ardent spirit realise itself. Britons born will guess at, and do justice to, the historian's meaning; but ought we not to tremble in opening a translation, lest that meaning in this passage be lamentably perverted, and the historian accredited, on his own showing, with a thirty years' recourse to stimulants, to sustain him under the fatigues of travel, study, and composition? As they festinant lentè, putting a stout heart to the stey brae of his twenty volumes, those readers of Alison, who retain aught of loyalty to the Queen's English, are vexed, or amused (according to their temperament), by such ever-recurring phrases as-"the whole combatants of the Grand Army,"-"the whole Cossacks of the Don,"-" the whole cattle, horses, and carriages in their possession,"-"the whole youth of the kingdom were summoned,"-" the whole dependants of the pontifical court,"-" Metternich ostensibly revealed his whole confidential communications to M. Otto,"-" Wellington had anxiously enjoined the whole Spanish generals,"" intercept the whole communications of the enemy,"" relinquish the whole ammunition waggons of the army,""King Joseph and his whole civil functionaries,"" the whole British columns were in motion,". Napoleon scrupled not to seize the whole fortresses and royal family of Spain,"-"the fatigue undergone by his whole attendants," &c. The Scotch confusion of will and shall, too, is kept up with national persistency :† Napoleon "frequently said that he

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*For instance, Sir Archibald's "set-scene" of the Trial of Queen Carolinę, meant as a companion-picture to that of Warren Hastings by Macaulay. The execution is as curious an infelicity as the design.

† Among other cherished Scoticisms may be remembered Sir Archibald's use of the verb "to require." E. g., in one short paragraph occur two cases in point. Napoleon's Swiss porter, we are told, was expected to be always at his post; "night and day he required to be at the door of the cabinet :"-while of the Emperor it is said, "so vast was the variety of information which required to be taken into account in the formation of his designs."-Hist. of Europe, ch. 78, § 47. The second instance indeed may be thought in effect, if not by right, a now naturalised Anglicism; but the first is pure specimen of its kind. Again: "the sword required to be thrown in to restore the balance" (79, 62);-" the British naval force on the [North American] Lakes required to bring every gun from Great Britain” (91, 63). 2 E

Dec.-VOL. CII. NO. CCCCVIII.

would die of cancer in the stomach before he was fifty" (wilful man!): he is made to say to the refractory Chambers (1813), "If all would now do their duty, I would be invincible in face of the enemy,"-and again, "If I had not possessed that ardent temperament of mind, I would never have raised myself to the first throne in the world." "A majority!" exclaims Charles X., "I should be sorry to gain it; I would not know what to do with it." Quoth Metternich in 1830, “I would be less alarmed if Polignac were more so." Pointing out the causes of our reverses in the American war of 1814, the historian adds, "And we will have ourselves to blame if they are again incurred." Lindley Murray's warning of the poor foreigner who transposed his wills and shalls-who would be drowned, and nobody should help him-has been lost upon Sir Archibald Alison.

Then again one is for ever lighting on some curiosity of style, in the shape of metaphor, similitude, ellipse, antithesis, &c. Napoleon, we are told, in awful capitals, was the "ÎNCARNATION OF THE LAST STAGE of THE REVOLUTION:" a mot more adventurous than distinct, of the Robert Montgomery order. Napoleon was surrounded by vices, "on the impulse of which he was elevated to greatness:" a somewhat novel adaptation of an "impulse." "A charge of French horsemen at Marengo placed Napoleon on the consular throne; another, of the English light dragoons on the flank of the Old Guard, hurled him to the rock of St. Helena." To the French Revolutionists, the "simple path of duty" is said to have been "insupportable." The Allied Sovereigns, when first they caught sight of Paris in 1814, "inhaled, during several minutes, the entrancing spectacle." In the American war of 1812, the striking of one of our frigates to a Yankee is thus elaborately expressed: "And the English colours were mournfully lowered to the broad pendant of their emancipated offspring,"-and a little further on the Chippewa action (1814) is called, "this unparalleled struggle [of England] with her worthy offspring." During the war with France, "a great proportion of the people had grown into existence," "and inhaled with their earliest breath an ardent desire for its success.' Of the military intrigues in favour of Napoleon while at Elba,-"The inferior officers and soldiers of the army were in an especial manner the seat of this conspiracy." So great was the joy in England after the battle of Waterloo, that not only "exultation beamed in every eye," but, "spontaneous illuminations were seen in every city :"-marry, a parlous sight! The italicising of the word ghost in the following sentence is Sir Archibald's own-" It did not establish a throne surrounded by republican institutions,' but a republic surrounded by the ghost of monarchical institutions." No occasion for italics, one might think, to draw attention to so striking a figure. One ghost surrounding a republic!-the idea is supernatural of course, and there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamed of in our philosophy: yet who can wonder if the phrase has been styled "showman's English," in reference to the showman's formula, "There you see Lord Nelson a-dying, surrounded by Captain Hardy." Verily it needed a ghost come from the grave to do that. Alison's quotations from foreign tongues, dead and living, are more profuse than correct. "Vive la Roi" is of course a misprint; but Aidez-toi et le ciel t'aidera" looks like a grace beyond the printer's

art, especially when repeated. It's a pity, too, when a line from Virgil or Horace won't scan, or a sonorous phrase from Tacitus won't parse. Nor is it quite comme il faut in a great historian to confound Caligula with Commodus, little as there may be to choose between those Arcades ambo; or, in & French scholar and critical chronicler, to interpret M. de Serre's celebrated Jamais (in the amnesty debate of 1819) by Never!"the regicides, never!"*—which, by the context, is just what De Serres did not, as it is what jamais need not, mean.

"the "He

Nor does the learned baronet seem to gain in accuracy of style with years and experience. In his latest volume (iii.) we have superabundant specimens of his old manner-e. g., "These [Asiatic] names will convey but little ideas to a European reader:"- Along the parapet is also placed, at certain distances, square, loopholed blockhouses:" "The whole palisades and outer walls were conquered by the Russians :". innate jealousy of the Russians at the English in the East:"(Wittgenstein, 1829) was allowed to retire accordingly, a step rested on his age and infirmities; and he received for his successor Count Diebitch, the chief of his staff," who, it is added, "expressed himself in flattering terms to his respectable predecessor:"-" the divergence of his opinions with those of his colleagues" [speaking of La Bourdonnaye, 1829]:-"It is impossible to qualify in too strong terms the conduct of Opposition in recent circumstances," is made to say M. de Chantelauze, in 1830:"the military histories of France... is a striking proof how strongly.. the public mind had been turned to warlike achievements" (p. 633):-the vehement gesticulation of the French school of acting, arises partly "from the experienced necessity of supplying, by the intensity of the representation, for the measured language and stately voice of the poet." But perhaps, on the whole, there is less verbosity in our historian's more recent labours-less of the tumid, turgid wordiness at which Mr. Disraeli sometime sneered, when he told us how "Mr. Rigby impressed on Coningsby... to make himself master of MR. WORDY'S History of the late War in twenty volumes, a capital work, which proved that Providence was on the side of the Tories." Mr. Disraeli has enjoyed the sweets of office, and has made Mr. Wordy honorary amends, by a baronetcy to wit, since that little pleasantry was indited.

It is edifying to note Sir Archibald's historical parallels, as stated in a grand climacteric sort of way. He has a set of historical uniques, ancient and modern; severely adjusted correlatives, each to each, and admitting of no other comparison than the one exclusively assigned by his uncompromising rhetoric. No words, he assures us, for instance, can convey an idea of the transports of joy which pervaded entire Greece when the news of the battle of Navarino was received:-"Never since the defeat of Hasdrubal by the consul Nero, on the banks of the Metaurus, had such a sensation pervaded the heart of a nation." One might suppose that

"In the irrevocable category should be placed the family of Buonaparte and the regicide voters. The rest are only exiled for a time. To conclude in one word -the regicides, never!" So M. de Serres is made to declaim; and, persistent in his negation of the force of jamais, Sir Archibald afterwards remarks, "The expression used by M. de Serres, jamais (never), made an immense sensation." But granting that the meaning of jamais must be "never," what then becomes of the meaning of the context?

during the revolutions and agitations of two hemispheres, between the triumphs of consul Nero and of Sir Edward Codrington, a national sensation of the kind had, at some time or other (for the time is long), and in some country or another (for the space is large), been experienced : but no ; the historian's never is inexorable, and nothing but Metaurus can answer to Navarino, nothing but Navarino to Metaurus. Occasionally, indeed, when the Alisonian method of rounding a period admits of or requires it, a wider latitude is conceded: as where it is said, of the massacre in the island of Chios (1822), that "modern Europe had never witnessed such an instance of bloodshed or horror. To find a parallel to it we must go back to the storming of Syracuse or Carthage by the Romans, or the sack of Bagdad or Aleppo by the arms of Timour." "Of Navarino again, we learn, that "never, save by the taking of Jerusalem, in 1199, by the crusading warriors under Godfrey of Bouillon, had so unanimous a feeling of exultation pervaded the Christian world." The abandonment by the Czar Nicholas of the siege of Silistria, in 1828, and his perilous voyage to Odessa, "furnished to the journalists of Europe ample ground for comparison with the flight of Xerxes across the Hellespont after the defeat of Salanis, two thousand years before." The mots of Charles X., it appears, became historical, so "extraordinary" was that prince's "turn for felicitous colloquy;" "repeated from one end of Europe to the other, they rivalled the most celebrated of Henry IV. in warmth of heart, and the most felicitous of Louis XIV. in terseness of expression." (Ah, that Sir Archibald would but cultivate the gift he thus makes characteristic of the Grand Monarque!) Speaking of Napoleon, again, "It is easy to see from his expressions and style of expression, that if he had not equalled Alexander in the lustre of his conquests, he was qualified to have rivalled Homer in the brilliancy of his conceptions." The "sufferings and privations" caused by Strikes, " often come to equal anything recorded in the darkest days of history-the siege of Jerusalem, or the blockade of Haarlem." So ruthless was revolutionary fury in eastern Spain, in 1821, that "the annals of the Roman proscriptions, of Athenian cruelty, of French atrocity, may be searched in vain for a similar instance of general, deliberate, and deeply-devised popular vengeance." The "Russian army exhibits a combination of physical strength and intellectual power . . . which no other country in modern times can exhibit, and to find a parallel to which we must go back to the Roman legions in the days of Trajan or Severus." Had the Russian insurgents in 1826 gained their purpose, "even the Reign of Terror in France would have been but a shadow of what must have ensued; the proscriptions of Marius and Sylla, the slaughter of Nero, the centralised unmitigated despotism of the Lower Empire, could alone have been looked for." The "alarming crisis of 1797," threatening a national bankruptcy, was surmounted with ease, by the simple device of declaring the Bank of England notes, like the treasury bonds in the second Punic War, a legal tender "-which Roman policy, "more even than the slaughter on the Metaurus, the triumph of Zama, determined the fate of the ancient world." "The journey of Ferdinand (VII.) from Valencia to Madrid (1814) was the exact counterpart of that of Charles II. from Dover to London, a hundred and fifty-three years before;" and so

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