was about to faint in the middle of his speech, and was obliged to stop. The side-doors were immediately thrown open, and the Chancellor rushing out, returned soon with a servant, who followed him with a bottle and glasses. Lord Mansfield drank two glasses of the wine, and after some time revived, and proceeded in his speech. We, who had no wine, were nearly as much recruited by the fresh air which rushed in at the open doors as his lordship by the wine. About nine the business ended in favour of Douglas, there being only five Peers on the other side. I was well pleased with that decision, as I had favoured that side: Professor Ferguson and I being the only two of our set of people who favoured Douglas, chiefly on the opinion that, if the proof of filiation on his part was not sustained, the whole system of evidence in such cases would be overturned, and a door be opened for endless disputes about succession. I had asked the Duke of B., some days before the decision, how it would go; he said that if the Law Lords disagreed, there was no saying how it would go; because the Peers, however imperfectly prepared to judge, would follow the Judge they most respected. But if they united, the case would be determined by their opinion; it being [the practice] in their House to support the Law Lords in all judicial cases.

'The rejoicings in Scotland were very great on this occasion, and even outrageous: although the Douglas family had been long in obscurity, yet the Hamiltons had for a long period lost their popularity. The attachment which all their acquaintances had to Baron Mure, who was the original author of this suit, and to Andrew Stuart, who carried it on, swayed their minds very much their way. They were men of uncommon good sense and probity.' (P. 514.)

But Carlyle saw the great Judge more nearly than in the House of Lords, and the following conversation with him is noteworthy :

'In the course of my operations about the window tax, I had frequently short interviews with Lord Mansfield. One day he sent for me to breakfast, when I had a long conversation with him on various subjects. Amongst others, he talked of Hume and Robertson's Histories, and said that though they had pleased and instructed him much, and though he could point out few or no faults in them, yet, when he was reading their books, he did not think he was reading English: could I account to him how that happened? I answered that the same objection had not occurred to me, who was a Scotchman bred as well as born; but that I had a solution to it, which I would submit to his lordship. It was, that to every man bred in Scotland the English language was in some respects a foreign tongue, the precise value and force of whose words and phrases he did not understand, and therefore was continually endeavouring to word his expressions by additional epithets or circumlocutions, which made his writings appear both stiff and redundant. With this solution his lordship appeared entirely satisfied. By this time his lordship perfectly understood the nature of our claim to exemption from the window tax, and promised me his aid, and suggested some new arguments in our favour.' (P. 516.)

It was during this visit to London that Carlyle sat to Martin for the picture from which the engraving is taken which forms the frontispiece of this volume. The face, in which one can trace the likeness to Kay's well-known caricatures, reminds one of some of the earlier portraits of Goethe. But there is a tinge in it of that hereditary fragility which carried so many of his loved ones to the tomb, and clouded the long earthly pilgrimage which yet remained for this man of mirth. The following passage, one of the latest which he wrote, and which must positively close our copious analysis, is full of sadness:

'When we returned from the south, we were happy to find our two fine girls in such good health; but my mother, and unmarried sister Sarah, had lived for some time close by us, and saw them twice every day. Sarah, the eldest, was now eight years of age, and had displayed great sweetness of temper, with an uncommon degree of sagacity. Jenny, the second, was now six, and was gay and lively and engaging to the last degree. They were both handsome in their several kinds, the first like me and my family, the second like their mother. They already had made great proficiency in writing and arithmetic, and were remarkably good dancers. At this time they betrayed no symptoms of that fatal disease which robbed me of them, unless it might have been predicted from their extreme sensibilities of taste and affection which they already displayed. It was the will of Heaven that I should lose them too soon. But to reflect on their promising qualities ever since has been the delight of many a watchful night and melancholy day. I lost them before they had given me any emotions but those of joy and hope.' (P. 526.)

The supplementary chapter, which tells the story of Dr. Carlyle's long career of usefulness, from the period at which the autobiography closes till his death in 1805, is by Mr. Burton, one of the best of living antiquarians, the author of 'Scotland from the Revolution to the Rebellion,' and, what is most of all to the present purpose, the biographer of Hume. It is fortunate that so able and independent a man was charged with the editorship of this curious fragment. Mr. Burton wisely resolved to publish it in its integrity, without suppression or alteration; and in preserving the accuracy and completeness of the text (which had been considerably tampered with by other persons who formerly had access to the manuscript), he has rendered another service to history and to literature.

ART. VII.-History of the United Netherlands, from the death of William the Silent to the Synod of Dort, with a full view of the English-Dutch struggle against Spain, and of the origin and destruction of the Spanish Armada. By JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, D.C.L. Two vols. 8vo. London: 1860.

M3 the Rise of the were of

R. MOTLEY'S former volumes, containing the History of the Rise of the Dutch Republic,' were reviewed by us in connexion with Mr. Prescott's Life of Philip II.'* In being thus reminded of the decease of that delightful historian, we must again lament the rapidity with which, during the past year or two, star after star, whose brilliancy has been the guide of youth, and the companion and delight of maturity and age, in the continents of the east and west, has disappeared below the horizon. Mr. Prescott's reputation from the first hour of its appearance has shone with a steady and enduring lustre; his great acquirements, his patience and unremitting hopefulness and industry under the most severe affliction which could happen to a student, his pure devotion to one of the loftiest departments of literature, the honest and single-hearted purpose of his life, have caused his name to be regarded with affection and esteem whereever English literature is read or heard of. That he should have left half told the story of Philip II. will long remain a subject of regret: and of this we are reminded in opening the present volumes, for although they embrace the same subject approached from a different side, one is never consoled for the half-finished picture of one artist by that of another. present portion of Mr. Motley's continuation of the History of the Netherlands' is written on a more extensive plan than that with which the public are already acquainted. This was in some degree necessary. From the death of William the Silent, the struggle in the Netherlands embraces more or less the contemporaneous history of France, Spain, and England, and indeed the whole interest of European history at that period. The archives of these various countries abound in MS. wealth, in diplomatic correspondence and state papers, the accumulations of the sixteenth century. These volumes bear evidence of long and laborious researches in these authentic collections-researches which, even if they have sometimes led Mr. Motley to violate the due proportions of his narrative, will be regarded by every student of European history with real interest.

* Ed. Rev., vol. cv. p. 1.

This

Most readers must have remarked that the historical productions of the present century are especially distinguished from those of the last by the study of manuscript authorities. In the days of Robertson and Hume it was considered sufficient for the historian to have studied the printed books which had relation to a given age, but in our time-partly from the greater facility of access to, and the better arrangement of, MS. documents, and partly from an earnest desire to see deeper into the subject he is not considered to have done his duty unless he goes through a great deal of manuscript reading. Mr. Motley says of these new sources of history:

Thanks to the liberality of many modern governments of Europe, the archives where the state-secrets of the buried centuries have so long mouldered, are now open to the student of history. To him who has patience and industry many mysteries are thus revealed, which no political sagacity or critical acumen could have divined. He leans over the shoulder of Philip the Second at his writing-table, as the king spells patiently out, with cipher-key in hand, the most concealed hieroglyphics of Parma or Guise or Mendoza. He reads the secret thoughts of "Fabius,"* as that cunctative Roman scrawls his marginal apostilles on each despatch; he pries into all the stratagems of Camillus, Hortensius, Mucius, Julius, Tullius, and the rest of those ancient heroes who lent their names to the diplomatic masqueraders of the sixteenth century; he enters the cabinet of the deeply-pondering Burghley, and takes from the most private drawer the memoranda which record that minister's unutterable doubtings; he pulls from the dressing-gown folds of the stealthy, softly-gliding Walsingham the last secret which he has picked from the Emperor's pigeon-holes, or the Pope's pocket, and which, not Hatton, nor Buckhurst, nor Leicester, nor the Lord Treasurer, is to see; nobody but Elizabeth herself; he sits invisible at the most secret councils of the Nassaus and Barneveldt and Buys, or pores with Farnese over coming victories, and vast schemes of universal conquest; he reads the latest bit of scandal, the minutest characteristic of king or minister, chronicled by the gossiping Venetians for the edification of the Forty; and, after all this prying and eavesdropping, having seen the cross-purposes, the bribings, the windings, the fencings in the dark, he is not surprised, if those who were systematically deceived did not always arrive at correct conclusions.' (Vol. i. p. 54.)

But these new opportunities have their dangers as well as their advantages: the student who is thus let into the cabinets of princes, ministers, and generals-who is enabled to search their secret thoughts who sees the great actors of political and diplomatic transactions in new aspects and relations, who has thus

The name usually assigned to Philip himself in the ParisSimancas Correspondence.

the means of unravelling and sifting to the bottom each formerly inexplicable intrigue-is tempted to exaggerate the importance of his discoveries. He has lived among the statesmen of a bygone age, he has watched with them the changing aspect and turns of policy, and become a participator in hopes and fears out of all proportion to the real issue of the question. Often a sterile attempt at political action has called into play all the passions of the chief actors with whom the historian is concerned; the records of it illustrate their character, and they modify or strengthen the already conceived opinions of the investigator, who pursues its windings and changing phases with a pleasure and an interest which he would fain impart to others. Indeed, by this minute study of the past, he is placed at the same disadvantage which it is so difficult to overcome in the present. What makes it almost impossible to write contemporaneous history is the difficulty of grasping a whole of seeing the due proportion of part to part, and each event, not in the fictitious grandeur of proximity, but in that harmonious significance which it really possesses. It is nearly as difficult to describe rightly the present as it would be to paint a landscape by poring over every square foot of its ground without rising to a general prospect. Time, after a generation or two, gives us a good point of view, from whence light and shadow, eminences and level spaces, appear in due proportion. But the historian, by the method we have been describing, loses this advantage of time; this near contemplation of the past brings all the disadvantages of the present, unless his judgment is sufficiently sure, and his grasp of the subject sufficiently powerful to enable him to compress the non-essential to its just dimensions.

In this respect Mr. Motley has not always been successful in keeping the graphic variety of his details subordinate to the main theme of his work. The temptation, from the extraordinary abundance of new material which he has fallen upon, has been great, and he has yielded to it. Nevertheless, so much light is thrown, by the history of negotiations now fully narrated for the first time, upon the court of Elizabeth, and the counsels of Philip and the Prince of Parma, that few will regret their presence, although they exceed the just requisites of the narrative. We thus dwell in limine on what we consider the only blemish in a most valuable historical work. The fault which we have touched on naturally interferes with the development of the story, and prevents it from having that lucid order, that unbroken continuity of purpose, which we seek for in a history; but it is atoned for by striking merits, by many narratives of great events faithfully, powerfully, and vividly executed, by the