cracy*, which is, in effect, a royalty composed of many persons. There is among the great states of Europe only one kingdom, that of the Netherlandst, in which the people live happily; they have no fears from the laws they repose on the benevolence of their magnanimous sovereign.

The people, nevertheless, in consequence of their investigations, and from their being well informed as to the conditions of their social existence, have no longer any doubts concerning the titles which legitimate command, nor the duties which submission involves; and, seeing the various criminal attempts which are made against their happiness and their dignity, strong in the universal reason which has preceded all things, and supported by the violated but imperishable rights of humanity, they have at last the courage to summon royalty to their bar, and to interrogate it: "What are you? Are you force? Are you justice? If you are justice, we fall at your feet; if you are force, we know you not, and we will resist you, for we also are force. Tell us what is your origin? If you be justice, it is divine; if you be nothing but force, it is not even human. Whence springs your right to the dominion of the earth? Comes it from the bosom of God, or from the heart of men? If it be derived only from yourselves, you are power and not justice. Open not your sacred books; they anathematize you. Let royalty cease to appeal to them; the books of philosophy are more favourable to their views; and they will find it more safe to confide in human reason, than to take refuge in the enigmas of theological policy.'-pp. 52-56.

The author then proceeds to state the usual arguments in favour of hereditary monarchies; but he contends that they are of no force where the sovereign does not truly reign in the hearts of his subjects. It is only thus, he says, that they can pay due homage to the eternal maxims of the purest and the most useful policy; "that the force of empires consists in the consent of those who obey" "that there is no republic more secure than the state in which those who exercise the supreme authority are endeared to the people;"" that an empire cannot be safe, unless it be founded in benevolence;"§ "that the maledictions of subjects are more dangerous than the arms of enemies ;"¶"that the destiny of kings is happy, when the people fear, not the prince, but for the prince;' and that, in fine, "in order to hold in the path of their duties the most undisciplined and savage men, wisdom and equity are infinitely more powerful than the authority of the sceptre, the confiscations, the proscriptions, the whips and the axes of power." These sublime maxims, he fears, may be found written in the code of royalty, but not in the hearts of kings, who act upon principles of a very different nature. As far as they go, therefore, they add nothing to the * The author adds the epithet impitoyable, which, if generally applied, would certainly be most unmerited.-Rev.

+ It should be observed that this work was printed at Brussels.-Rev. + Liv.

|| Sen.

Princeps plus timere debet subditorum maledictiones, quam inimicorum arma. Henricus Castiliæ Rex.

** Amiratus.

§ Dion.

++ Nerburtus. Hist. Polon.

argument in favour of monarchy. The argument drawn from the right of conquest, is at best of a very disputable character; so that, in short, according to this writer, the continuance of monarchy entirely depends on the conduct of the sovereigns in Európe.

It cannot be denied, and the people of several nations have already ceased to forget, that all states were republics before they were monarchies. For the changes which they have undergone, many causes may be assigned; but it must be allowed, that if the question were to depend on the injustice of the transactions which, from time to time, converted all the old republics into monarchies, the arguments in support of royalty would be feeble indeed. It was undoubtedly the passion for power, aided by violence, which changed the nature of those governments. This is a fact that history attests in the clearest manner; and it is one that the people, when fully enlightened as to all their rights, will not overlook. Our author also contends that the republican is a more natural form of government than any other.

If communities have commenced with republics, it is a proof that the republican feelings are the most natural to mankind; and such is their strength, that they cannot be altogether extinguished even in monarchies founded on long continued habits. The stormy annals of empires bear witness to this. Scarcely a century has passed over that the cry of republicanism has not been heard in some quarter or another. Royalty has hitherto succeeded in stifling this menacing cry, which originating in Rome, Greece, and Germany, has so frequently agitated all the countries of Europe, and shaken their thrones. Royalty has, with great difficulty been hitherto the conqueror; but is it always to be victorious, and can it always be safe in the presence of an enemy so formidable as the republican spirit?-Every thing changes, because every thing decays; a secret force threatens every thing; every thing perishes through abuse and excess. Absolute royalty is subject to this condition. The communities of mankind, after having searched in vain for happiness under every political form, and after having endured so many centuries of outrage, oppression, and iniquity, are returning to the point from whence they had originally set out. It is a movement which may be observed as clearly as that of the stars.

The people passed from the republican to the monarchical state; and why do not the sovereigns perceive that the political world has entered into one of those great re-actions caused by the nature of human affairs, which have, like the great waters, their flux and reflux; that the people have a tendency to return from the monarchical to the republican state, and that this re-action has already begun? It is even perceptible that for some time this spirit, gathering strength from the fresh indiscretions of kings, precipitates itself down the declivity with the greatest rapidity, and that it threatens to surprize the monarchs in their security.

In a hundred years there will no longer be a monarchy in France, foretold a prince of the reign of Louis XIV. His prediction has been accomplished. "I am alarmed at the progress of the republican spirit,' exclaimed Louis XV. Do the sovereigns of our days imagine that the danger has passed away, and that the royal power will alone remain un

shaken amid the changes of the world? Do they think that the republican spirit is extinguished by the victories of a conqueror? If the republican spirit has by its faults justified royalty for a moment, royalty, in its turn, by relapsing into its vices, has justified the republican spirit. If in France, for some time, the monarchical spirit has received greater extension than the republican spirit, who has counted the voices of the present day, and will take upon himself to assert that even in France, the opinions in favour of a republic do not occupy a larger space than those in favour of a monarchy? In that country, royalty has done wonders against itself, even within the last five years.'-pp. 90—96.

The example of America is of course adduced in favour of the answer which the reader may already foresee, the author gives to his own question.

'If America has been a new world, it creates a new world in its turn. Sovereigns should be on their guard, and we tell them, not for the purpose of threatening, but of warning them, that America is educating Europe. It has solved great political problems; every thing that exists in the Union has been denied by all the publicists to be possible. Every thing that appears monstrous to the governments of Europe is natural to its soil. Royalty alone is monstrous there. Europe is the place for political discussions; America is the place where they are decided; but the question that remains, is to know if she decides them for America alone; it would be by no means prudent for kings to abandon this question to itself and to time!'-pp. 96, 97.

It is hardly necessary to state the conclusion at which the author arrives after this course of reasoning. He thinks that the monarchical spirit in Europe still masters the spirit of republicanism; but at the same time that every year royalty is committing so many faults, that it is constantly losing a degree of strength which republicanism gains, and that in due course of time the latter will be triumphant.

The remaining sections of the work contain little more than repetitions, under various heads, of the sentiments expressed in the extracts which we have given. In order to prepare for the new state of things, which the author expects, there is scarcely a single old institution in existence which he does not wish to see abolished. There may be some truth in the notions which he entertains concerning the progress throughout Europe, of democratic opinions. Atheistic sentiments, or at least sentiments opposed to christianity, abound, also, we are aware, in France. But we do not see any reason to believe that the states of Europe will all be republics quite so soon as he imagines; neither do we fear that the doctrines of christianity will be eradicated from the continent so easily or so speedily as he predicts.

ART. VI.-The Works of Samuel Parr, LL.D., with Memoirs of his Life and Writings, and a Selection from his Correspondence. By John Johnstone, M. D. 8 vols. 8vo. London: Longman & Co. 1828. ALTHOUGH not numbering ourselves among the more enthusiastic admirers of the late Dr. Parr, we are well pleased to see the merits of a man who was unquestionably on many accounts an honour to his age, commemorated by such a splendid monument as the present publication. The very noise which Dr. Parr made during his life-time, is a sufficient reason why the world should now be fully informed as to what he was, and what he did; and this information can obviously in no way be so well and so fairly communicated, as just by the presentment to the public of such a collected edition as we have here of those works on which his reputation is conceived to rest, illustrated by such a memoir of his personal history as here also forms their accompaniment. Whatever Dr. Parr may have been, he was certainly, in his own country at least, during a great part of his life, notorious enough; and it is a tribute due, therefore, to the public curiosity, naturally anxious for a correct picture of an individual of whom so much had been every where for so many years vaguely and perhaps erroneously reported, that as ample an account of him should be drawn up as the materials that exist will supply, and put into a form that may be both accessible and permanent. We rejoice, therefore, as we have said, that, after the deluge of gossip we have lately had from so many quarters touching this great scholar, we have at last. received from Dr. Johnstone the long promised and far more acceptable present of his works themselves, and of that selection from his correspondence, which forms so especially interesting a portion of the publication before us.

The works of Dr. Parr, as here collected, consist almost entirely of productions that have already been long before the public, and with regard to which, therefore, on the present occasion, we can have little or nothing to say. The learned Doctor was a great reader, but never was guilty of an original thought in the course of his existence. Every thing about him, indeed, was taught and artificial. Even his taste-and he had some taste in the composition of Latin inscriptions-was all acquired (not merely awakened or improved) by the study of the models of classical antiquity, and differed little, either in its origin or its character, from what is called the taste of an able taylor in cutting out a coat,—a matter to be learned, we presume, by any one who will submit to the requisite apprenticeship. Every article of this sort which he was employed to furnish, was fabricated rigidly secundum artem, and finished, we acknowledge, with the touch of a master; but it was of a master artizan who perfectly knew his trade, not of a master artist investing his every performance in graces of his own creation, and

making it as it were a part of himself, by animating it throughout with his own spirit. As for his Latin style in general, and we may say the same thing of his English, it can scarcely be affirmed to have even the merit of being a good imitation of a good model. It has much roundness and vehemence of phrase, certainly; but none of the more exquisite charms of eloquence;-no nature, no freedom, nothing to remind us that it is the utterance of a being like ourselves, and not of a dead automaton, Overloaded and stiffened as it is with simile and metaphor, it is the very reverse of imaginative. Its sunshine is merely painted, and gives neither light nor heat. There is every where, to be sure, a gorgeous enough flush of colouring, but it is all laid on as with a brush; none of it forms a living part of the sentiment, blooming from it and with it, like the hues on a flower. Its ambitious and heartless ornament, indeed, is the grand disfigurement of Dr. Parr's style. Having nothing about him of the spirit of poetry, he would have acted wisely in eschewing the mimicry of its form. He was, however, not only no poet-a very common case-but being none, believed himself to be a very great one, which was infinitely more unfortunate.

As to the reading of this distinguished individual, it was confined almost entirely to his own and the two classic tongues, and to books belonging only to two or three particular departments in these. Of Oriental literature, whether ancient or modern, he knew nothing, or next to nothing. Of the literature of the different modern European nations, (with the exception of that of his own country), he appears to have been nearly entirely ignorant. Of science we do not find it recorded that he knew any thing whatever; and of this, indeed, we have sufficient proof in one of his letters, contained in the present publication, (vide vol. viii. p. 568), in which, referring to the case of a person born on the 19th of May, 1778, and who died on the 8th of March, 1794, he declares himself utterly unable to determine whether he lived sixteen or seventeen days more than fifteen years and nine months-but 'suspects, and only suspects, that he is right in saying sixteen;' the fact being that seventeen is the correct number. We question much if he had even read the mathematical treatises of the Greeks; and may be pretty certain that, if he did, he did not understand them. He had probably perused, however, every thing else extant in Greek or Latin, and made himself very completely master at least of the phraseology of the different writers, however entirely he may have missed in many cases the true meaning and spirit of their compositions. This amounts merely to saying, that he had studied very minutely and extensively the languages of Greece and Rome-which he evidently might have done without learning much more of the poetry or the metaphysics of the ancients, than he did of their geometry. In his own language, at all events, although in the course of his long life he had probably read most of