river, and being without boats, the small corps of regulars on the north bank, aided by a large levy of Ghazis, or militia, summoned to a religious war, were exposed to Runjit's attack. The Hugoumont of this wellfought field was a broad hillock on which the Afghan left-centre rested. Three times did the Sikh squadrons dash round it, and their infantry (trained and armed in European fashion,) pressed up its sides with musket and bayonet, and every time were they driven back by the sabre, and galled as they retired, by the long guns of the Afghans. But Runjit was not the man to be beaten by a handful of soldiers, and a rabble of fanatics. Re-forming his shaken regiments, he wheeled them to the flanks -then put himself at the head of his household cavalry, cleared the ground in his front by a rapid and steady charge, driving the Afghans up the slope, pushed them back on those who held the crest of the hill, broke through the now irregular mass, and hunted them down on the other side-his victory was complete. Not only was his pursuit one long slaughter, but Azim fearing that his treasure and stores at Muchni would be taken, and perhaps that Runjit would plump down between him and his capital, made a hasty counter-march through Jelalabad, and so bitterly did he feel the effects of a defeat accomplished before his eyes, yet without his striking a blow, that he never lifted his head, and reached Cabul to die, while Runjit swept the right bank of the Indus from Peshawar to Dera-Ismael.

In a few months after Azim's death, his brothers seized on his treasure, amounting to three millions sterling, and divided the relics of the empire between them. Sirdar Sultan held the town and plain of Peshawur, paying tribute to Runjit Singh. Shere Dil Khan held Candahar, and Dost Mohammed took Cabul, Ghuzni, and the whole territory from Cohistan to near Khelat-ï-Ghilji. Herat remained in the hands of Mahmud, who dying in 1829, was succeeded by his son, Kamran. From that time to the English invasion, no revolution took place. Sujah made frequent attempts to regain his crown, but his unpopularity secured his defeat, and he returned to Ludiana on his pension of 4,000 rupees. But a new sun arose for him-Lord Auckland resolved to carry him triumphant in the centre of an Anglo-Indian army to Cabul, and accomplished his resolve-but the account of that expedition belongs to our next chapter.

ON THE USE AND STUDY OF HISTORY.*

(Continued from page 462 of preceding vol.)

THE great historians of Greece and Rome, and of the middle ages down to the beginning of the eighteenth century, are the subject of our author's third lecture. He there passes in review, the shadows of the mighty dead-"shadows of beauty, shadows of power"-and gives the characteristic features of each in words full of eloquence and truth. Between the historians of that period, and those of the succeeding time down to our own, there is this striking and important distinction, that the former were in general actors and spectators of the events which they narrate, while the information of the latter is secondary. The former generally took an active and leading part in the struggles which they have narrated; they were generals or statesmen, and partook of the triumph of their country or party, or shared in its adversity; they were among the notables of their own time, and they have preserved in their writings the remembrance of that time, and of themselves. Hence their writings have an additional value, and possess increased charms on that account. It may be that their political or national prejudices have given a bias to their writings, but experience has shown that in that respect the moderns have no advantage over them; that the prejudices of party, religion, or country, are as effectual in warping the truth of a history of events that occurred five hundred years since, as if the author had been mixed up with them himself.

But there is this advantage to be derived from the former, that the prejudices which find expression and representation in their works are contemporaneous prejudices; they are feelings entertained by the men who lived, and acted, and fought, and suffered then-they are themselves part, and an important part of the history of the time-and we have them clearly and authentically, because unconsciously expressed by the historian. There is besides much of the characteristic spirit of the age in which he lived embalmed in the writings of the author, who was himself an actor, which would otherwise perish utterly. The peculiar tendencies of thought and action, the dominant ideas, the prevailing character of mind that subsisted at the periods when they lived, are mirrored in the pages of the contemporary historians; and they not only tell us in direct terms what they saw, but we derive from them a knowledge of much that they were themselves unconscious of. Thus, in Herodotus, we find the fresh and blooming youth of Greece, the period of credulous hope, of elastic energy, of unselfish virtue, of patriotic devotion. That age passes away, and the period of mature manhood approaches; the period of bustle, of struggle for existence or supremacy, the period of

* On the Use and Study of History, by W. TORRENS M'Cullagh, LL.B., M.R.I.A., &c. Dublin: MACHEN.

JULY.-1842.

21

internal dissension, of party politics. Not as yet, however, has the grace or the lustre of youth fled altogether-the lessons of early life are not yet forgotten. Although the pressure of necessity, or the prompting of selfinterest, may cause them to be disregarded-yet there is still a belief in their truth, still an intention to adopt them as guides of conduct when the temptation is removed. If evil deeds are done, yet they are not considered as aught but evil; if faith is broken, it is not avowed as a principle of action. This was the epoch of the Peloponnesian war, and its characteristics are pictured rather than chronicled by Thucydides.

Then came the age of decadence and decay, the age in which self was every thing and country nothing; the age in which the governing influence was money, the age of mercenary soldiers, mercenary orators, mercenary philosophers, mercenary oracles; the age in which there was no belief in man's truth, or in God's existence. That age has found an adequate representative in Xenophon-he is for us the type-Greek of that period, as Thucydides and Herodotus are of the preceding. Our author with justice wonders that Xenophon's writings should have been selected as a class-book for youth, in preference to his more wholesome predecesBut is it not still stranger that for a long period, and we believe even still, the dull political fiction of the Cyropædia, destitute of truth as a history, and of interest as a romance, should have been forced down the throats of unhappy boys, simply because it happens to abound with Greek particles? If the old gentlemen who swayed our educational destiny when young, were determined that we should swallow a certain quantity of their favoured author, why did they not treat us to the Anabasis, to a real history, instead of a stupid sham. But returning to our author, we cannot deny ourselves the pleasure of presenting to our readers, his pictures of the great men of old.

sors.

"Looking along the walls of our best historic galleries, how few poets-kings of art -time-mirrors- do we find: how few! Still there are some. Let us look at-into them rather, for a little while, instead of tiring our eyes perusing the ignoble crowd of imitations, daubs, and transcripts.

"And, first, what is this-without setting or frame,-a nine-sided crystal, clear as the white moonlight-lustrous as the evening star; with traces of antiquity about it, yet not old; venerable but still full of young immortal buoyancy; two thousand years of age, yet nowise obsolete; in affable and cheery talk as neighbourly as though of yesterday? Old friend,—most eloquent of guides,-faithful counsellor,-man, in all man's wants and heart-failings, yet more than man in all man's goodness, eloquence, and bravery-History's king-HERODOTUS-what words befit thy eulogy? There is no wearisome preliminary apologetic mud to be knee-deeped through, before you get to his orchard gate; but it swings on its easy hinges there, and seems to say, all that I have you are welcome to. There is no badly acted bashfulness or no-reason reasons, for his offering you his notions of things and men. If you don't want to hear, 'tis to be supposed you will go your way; if you do want to hear, tarry and listen. And there, in the sunshine of his home, the green old man sits talking of his travels and research in foreign lands, and what he recollects to have heard there,-wondrous tales of wonderful knowledge-knowledge that, in the main, no cavil of subsequent centuries has been able to break down. Here and there a grotesque legend, full of meaning and mythic grace, appears, but under no critical gibbet, with sentence of impos

ture scrawled above it. Herodotus never dreamt of pausing to set up finger-posts of notification where the broken stones of literal fact begin, and where the flowery by-path of illustration ends."

*

In

"Thucydides is the work of a statesman. It is a proud trophy of great forbearance, and great love of country, under terrible exasperation. Thucydides was a man of eminent political rank at Athens. His party were beaten, and he was ostracised. his retirement he indited the story of that memorable struggle of parties and principles, that rent all Greece during his time. People say he is partial ;-to be sure he is. I would not give a fig for his history if he was not. But he is most just, most true, most Greek. His partizanship never stimulates him to traduce his country. He glorifies Athens even in his exile; not cowering, or deprecating her anger, but giving her his blessing while he persists in saying—you have wronged me. He is less luxuriant, less garrulous, less picturesque, than his predecessor of Halicarnassus; but not less truly ideal. Herodotus is the mingled dance of warriors, and festal maids; Thucydides, the procession of armed citizens and their children to the altar.

Thucydides is a doric portico, chaste, solemn, built on a model which no time can cease to admire, which no ornament or trick of dizening can improve. Its embellishments are not here or there, unequally scattered up and down; but are so identified with the whole fane, so thoroughly made part and parcel of the whole, that they cannot be distinguished or specified apart from it.

Like

"One of the most remarkable names in Grecian history is that of Xenophon. his predecessors, he was a man of action, and chronicled the deeds of his time. But as the spirit of that time was different, so was the temper of the witness, and the character of his testimony. Herodotus sang what he felt; and his song, like his fervid day, is passionate, credulous, thoroughly earnest. Thucydides fell on more prosaic times; and his noble eloquence is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought.' But it is manly sorrow for the ills around him, and lamentation that he cannot heal them. Xenophon was a sophist. If he believed any thing, it was the exceeding profitableness of keeping one's temper, and the prudence of affecting to consult oracles. Herodotus was an honest citizen; Thucydides, a baffled statesman; Xenophon, a man of the world; Herodotus, a patriot-poet; Thucydides, a philosophic patriot; Xenophon, a metaphysician with whom patriotism was a prejudice, and poetry and religion fables. I know that he consulted omens; of course he did; that was judicious in a general, and graceful in a writer: but as for faith, I imagine that he saw little into that. All three were personally brave, and bore themselves like true men in the fray; Xenophon's fame as a general, moreover, has become immortal, and by all accounts deservedly. But there is one damning difference between his soldiership and theirs. They fought for Carian and Athenian liberty; Xenophon's sword was first drawn for a Persian prince, and last for a Spartan king,-seldom if ever for Athens."

*

"Polybius is the connecting link between the Greek and Roman annalists. A citizen of Achaia by birth and education, he had filled exalted stations in his own country, ere the arbitrary mandate of conquest compelled him to fix his residence at Rome. It was there he undertook to write the eventful story of his own times. He wrote in his native tongue; but the whole tenour and spirit of the work is Roman. He tells us at the outset, that his object was to show in what manner, and under what forms of rule, nearly all the habitual world was in half a century reduced beneath the Roman yoke;' and to demonstrate, that this vast design was formed and executed upon the noblest principles.'"

"As a political chronicle there are few documents of equal value; and in the nibbling criticisms on its want of ornament' and 'descriptive episodes,' I am not disposed to join. A great man, be he either actor or chronicler, poet or inventor, must be judged by the law of his specific nature, or by none."

"I do not therefore cavil with Polybius for his way of working; he was not only the best judge of how to say the thing that was in his heart to say, but the only judge

of it. But with all my soul I hate and fear him. Had he been a Roman, vaunting of his race, I could forgive his immortal triumphing: 'twere natural then, and what is intuitive cannot, I suppose, be altogether wrong. The tiger licks his chops when sated with the warm blood of his prey; when men without concealment rob and kill,' it seems a part of the impartial instinct to glory in the deed. But for the trodden to exult, for the captive to attune his harp in Babel's halls in celebration of the victor,— for an Achaian citizen to undertake the historic vindication of Scipio and Æmilius,— no, I can never look on that as other than a great evil. It is a fearful fraud on human sympathy-a shameful challenge of the deepest truths of nature,—a daring mine laid beneath the very citadel of self-respect. Admitting fully all its worth as art and value as a record, still I wish this history of Polybius never had been written. 'Tis the initiatory hymn of candour sung by the enslaved to their conquerors. That the harmonies are fine, and the voice full of melody, makes one but grieve the more. The accomplishment has unhappily proved but too infectious; and the example of Polybius has been gladly followed by all the lacquey-hearted crew, who choose to wear the livery of power rather than to mend the old honest coat of their misfortune, or to set about weaving for themselves a new one. To talk proudly without being able to feel proud, is the vanity of appearing to be impartial, passionless, candid."

"Of Livy. I never open the smooth glittering plates, whereon he engraved his noble creations, without asking myself the question-are not poets then superior to all accidents of birth or education? How such a being could have arisen, grown up to maturity, and expanded to such power and beauty in that atmosphere of steel filings,— seems to me the most inscrutable of things. Of all the great nations of the earth, the Romans had the least ideality in them. Of all the literatures in the world, the Latin is the least poetical. I dont mean that they had not plenty of rhythmers, prize-ode manufacturers, hexameter spinners, and cattle of that kind. Oh plenty! But the raw material they were obliged to import. Till their intercourse with Greece, they knew about as much of poetry, as the English, before their intercourse with the East, did of silk handkerchiefs. By dint of hard labour and copying they got together a secondhand literature; and there are dolts in the world who think the copy as good as the original. But in the mass, Roman verse is a field without wild flowers. There is plenty of good solid feeding, of wholesome fattening herbage therein; but the very colour of the grass is marketable; it is growing hay, not the spangled luxuriance or many-hued verdure of Arcadia or Asphodel.

"How Livy came of such a time and race is wondrous. It is a rock fount in the dry sandy, choking desert, springing clear, bubbling, gay, ideal--for Rome's use and sacred to Rome's honour, yet in its intellectual properties most un-Roman. There is more fresh original unborrowed poetry in any one book of Livy, than in all Horace, Virgil, Lucan, and the rest of them put together. If you have never read his account of the burning of Rome by the Gauls, do so by all means; and if you are unacquainted with Livy's language, read the translation, which, though immeasurably inferior, will yet suffice to give you the great leading ideas of the picture. 'Tis not indeed the painting; the warm colouring is lost in transcription; but it is a capital engraving after the picture, and that too is something.

"There is no man with whose temper or opinions I have personally less sympathy, than Livy; and there is none with whom I have more-there is no historian of whom I think I have read so much, as Tacitus. Nevertheless I cannot level them as artists. The time for the production of such a work as that of Livy was gone by. Livy would not have had the heart to write, had he lived a century or two later, in the terrible days of unhappy Tacitus. Livy is the Io Triumphe of a conquering republic, on the eve of its self-destruction; Tacitus, the wail of the national heart as it sank to die.

"In this respect, I am inclined to look upon this work of Tacitus, as one of the most stupendous efforts of truly moral greatness that we know of. I allude especially to the triumph of self-sustaining energy it manifests. In most other biographies of na