which constitutes human transactions, it is sometimes refreshing to contemplate for a while the calm serenity and indestructible features of Nature. resting in a history. They may be rejected The modern French historians, forcibly struck with the insipidity and tameness of the philosophical histories, and fraught with the heart-rending_recollections and fervent passions of the Revolution, have sought to give life and animation, as well as fidelity and accuracy, to their works, by a sedulous recurrence to contemporary annals and authority, and an introduction of not only the facts and This eternal and indestructible superiority statements, but the ideas and words to be found of genius to all the efforts of industry and inin the ancient chronicles. Hence the habitual telligence, when unenlightened by its divine recurrence to original authority, not only by light, is not only noways inconsistent with the reference at the foot of the page, but by quota- most minute acquaintance with facts and sedution in the words of the old authors, of the lous attention to historic accuracy, but it can actual expressions made use of on the more attain its highest flights only by being founded important occasions. There can be no doubt on that basis. Mere imagination and fancy that this is in some respects an improvement, will never supply the want of a faithful delineboth with a view to the fidelity and accuracy ation of nature. The most inexperienced of history; for it at once affords a guarantee observer has no difficulty in distinguishing the for the actual examination of original authority one from the other. No great and universal by the writer, provides a ready and immediate reputation was ever gained, either in fiction, check on inaccuracy or misrepresentation, history, or the arts of imitation, but by a close and renders his work a "Catalogue Raisonné," and correct representation of reality. Romance where those who desire to study the subject rises to its highest flights when it transports thoroughly, may discover at once where their into the pages of the novelist the incidents, materials are to be found. The works of both thoughts, and characters of real life. History the Thierrys,* of Barante, Sismondi, and Miche- assumes its most attractive garb when it clothes let, are, throughout, constructed on this prin- reality with the true but brilliant colours of ciple; and thence, in a great measure, the romance. Look at the other arts. How did fidelity, spirit, and value of their productions. Homer and Shakspeare compose their immorBut fully admitting, as we do, the importance tal works? Not by conceiving ideal events of this great improvement in the art of histori--and characters, the creation only of their own cal composition, it has its limits; and writers who adopt it will do well to reflect on what those limits are. Though founded on fact, though based on reality, though dependent for its existence on truth, History is still one of the Fine Arts. We must ever recollect that Mr. Fox assigned it a place next to Poetry, and before Oratory. All these improvements in the collection and preparation of materials add to the solidity and value of the structure, but they make no alteration in the principles of its composition. However the stones may be cut out of the quarry, however fashioned or carved by the skill of the workman, their united effect will be entirely lost if they are not put together by the conception of a Michael Angelo, a Palladio, or a Wren. Genius is still the soul of history; its highest inspirations must be derived from the Muses. The most valuable historical works, if not sustained by this divine quality, will speedily sink into useful quarries or serviceable books of reference. In vain does a Utilitarian age seek to discard the influence of imagination, and subject thought to the deductions of fact and reason, and the motives of temporal comfort. The value of fancy and ardour of mind, is more strongly felt in the narration of real, than even the conception of fictitious events: for this reason, that it is more easy to discard uninteresting facts from a romance than render them inte *In the "Histoire de la Conquête de l'Angleterre par es Normands, par Auguste Thierry," and the "Histoire Jes Gaulois,” and “Histoire des Rois Merovingiens, par Amédée Thierry" (brother of Auguste). prolific imaginations, but by closely observing and describing nature, and by giving to their characters (albeit cast in the mould of fancy) those traits of reality, which, being founded on the general and universal feelings of the hu man breast, have spoken with undiminished force to every succeeding age. How did Raphael and Claude elevate Painting to its highest and most divine conceptions, as well as its most exquisite and chastened finishing? By assiduously copying nature,-by drawing every limb, every feature, every branch, every sunset, from real scenes, and peopling the world of their brilliant imaginations, not with new creations, but those objects and those images with which in reality all men were familiar. True, they moulded them into new combinations; true, they gave them an expression, or threw over them a light more perfect than any human eye had yet witnessed: but that is precisely the task of genius; and it is in performing it that its highest excellence is attained. It is by moulding reality into the expression of imagination, that the greatest triumphs of art are attained; and he who separates the one from the other will never rise to durable greatness in either. We are the more inclined to insist on this eternal truth, as we perceive in the present style of historical composition, both in this country and on the continent, unequivocal indications of a tendency to lose sight of the great end and aim of history, in the anxiety of attaining accuracy in its materials. Again and again we assert, that such accuracy is the indispensable basis of history; it must form its elements and characterize all its parts. But it will not of itself form an historian; it is to history, what the sketches from nature in the Liber Veritatis are to the inimitable Claudes of the Doria Palace at Rome, or the National Gallery in London. Writers in this age have been so forcibly struck with the necessity of accuracy in their facts, and original drawing in their pictures, that they have gone into the opposite extreme; and the danger now is, not so much that they will substitute imagination for reality, or neglect original drawing in their pictures, as that, in their anxiety to preserve the fidelity of the sketches from which their pictures are taken, they will neglect the principles of their composition, and the great ends, moral, political, and religious, of their art. that they have not regarded history as one of the fine arts; they have not studied unity of effect, or harmony of composition; they have forgot the place assigned it by Fox,- next to poetry in the arts of composition. In the search of accuracy, they have sometimes injured effect; in the desire to give original words, they have often lost originality of thought. Their pages are invaluable to the annalistand as books of reference or of value to scholars they will always maintain a high place in our literature; but they will not render hopeless, like Livy, Tacitus, or Gibbon, future histories on the subjects they have treated. From the facts they have brought to light, a future historian will be able to give a correct detail of British story, which, if clothed in the garb of imagination, may attain durable celebrity, and may possibly come in the end to rival the simpler but less truthful narrative of Hume, in popularity and interest. This tendency is more particularly conspicuous in the continental authors; but it is also very visible in several justly esteemed historical writers of our own country. If you take Colonel Napier's descriptions of battles and up any of the volumes of Thierry, Barante, the heart-stirring events of military warfare Michaux, Sismondi, or Michelet, you will find are superior to any thing in the same style, not the greater part of their pages filled with quo- only in modern but almost in ancient history, tations from the old chronicles and contempo- His account of the battles of Albuera and Sala. rary annalists. In their anxiety to preserve manca, of the sieges of Badajos and St. Sebas accuracy of statement and fidelity in narrative, tian, of the actions in the Pyrenees, and the they have deemed it indispensable to give, on struggle of Toulouse, possess a heart-stirring almost all occasions, the very words of their interest, a force and energy of drawing, which original authorities. This is a very great mis- could have been attained only by the eye of take,—and indeed so great a one, that if perse- genius animated by the reminiscences of realivered in, it will speedily terminate that school of ty. But the great defect of his brilliant work historical composition. It is impossible to make is the want of calmness in the judgment of an harmonious whole, by a selection of passages political events, and undue crowding in the deout of a vast mass of original writers of vari-tails of his work. He is far too minute in the ous styles and degrees of merit, and running account of inconsiderable transactions. He perhaps over a course of centuries. It would be just as likely that you could make a perfect picture, by dovetailing together bits of mosaic, dug up from the ruins of ancient Rome; or an impressive temple, by piling on the top of each other, the columns, entablatures, and architraves of successive structures, raised during a course of many centuries. Every composition in the fine arts, to produce a powerful impression, and attain a lasting success, must have that unity of expression, which, equally as in poetry and the drama, is indispensable to the production of emotion or delight in the mind of the person to whom it is addressed; and unity of expression is to be attained equally in ten thousand pages and by recording ten This defect is equally conspicuous in the thousand facts, as in an epic of Milton, a pic-pages of M. Michelet. That he is a man not ture of Claude's, or a drama of Sophocles. merely of extensive and varied reading, but Sharon Turner, Lingard, Tytler, and Hal-fine genius and original thought, is at once aplam, are most able writers, indefatigable in parent. He states in his preface, and the pethe collection of facts, acute in the analysis of rusal of his work amply justifies the asserauthorities, luminous in the deductions they tion, "that the most rigid criticism must conhave drawn from them. Immense is the addi- cede to him the merit of having drawn his tion which their labours have made to the real narrative entirely from original sources." But and correct annals of the British empire. But it were to be wished, that amidst this anxious though many of their episodes are most capti- care for the collection of materials, and the vating, and parts of their works must entrance impress of a faithful and original character every reader, there is no concealing the fact, upon his work, he had been equally attentive that their pages are often deficient in interest, to the great art of history, viz. the massing and are far from possessing the attraction objects properly together, keeping them in the which might have been expected from subjects due subordination and perspective which their of such varied and heart-stirring incident, relative importance demands, and conveying treated by writers of such power of composi- a distinct impression to the reader's mind tion and learned acquirements. The reason is, of the great æras and changes which the va throws the light too equally upon all the figures in his canvas; the same fault which characterizes the home scenes of Wilkie, and will render them, with equal, perhaps superior, genius, inferior in lasting effect to the paintings of Teniers or Gerard Dow. So prodigious is the accumulation of detached facts which he describes, that the most enthusiastic admirer of military narrative is speedily satiated, and ordinary readers find their minds so confused by the events passed under review, that, with the exception of a few brilliant actions and sieges, they often close the work without any distinct idea of the events which it has so ad mirably recorded. ried story of his subject presents. Want of | human affairs, as they would of a new plan attention to this has well nigh rendered all the or a new opera: they might as well speak of rest of no avail. To the learned reader, who is a new style in sculpture or painting, in mathe previously familiar with the principal events hematics or astronomy, in epic or dramatic describes, his narrative may convey something poetry. We should like to see any one who like a definite idea of the thread of events: would improve on the style of Phidias and but how many are they compared to the great Raphael, of Homer and Virgil, of Tasso and mass of readers? Perhaps one in a hundred Milton, of Sophocles or Racine. In inferior in France-one in five hundred in all other styles, indeed, there is a very great variety in countries. The great bulk of readers may this, as there is in all the other Fine Arts; but shut his last volume after the most careful in the highest walks there is but one. The perusal, without retaining any distinct recol-principles of the whole are the same; and lection of the course of French History, or those principles are to produce generality of any remembrance at all of any thing but a effect out of specialty of objects; to unite fidelity few highly wrought up and interesting pas- of drawing with brilliancy of imagination. sages. This is the great defect of the work, Observe with what exquisite skill Tasso works arising from want of attention to the due pro- this uniform impression out of the varied portion of objects, and not throwing subordi- events of his "Jerusalem Delivered;" therein nate objects sufficiently into the shade. The lies his vast superiority to the endless advensame grievous mistake is conspicuous in tures of the more brilliant and imaginative Mackintosh, Lingard, and Turner's Histories of Ariosto. The principles which regulated the England. It is the great danger of the new or compositions of the "Prometheus Vinctus" of graphic school of history; and unless care be Eschylus and the "Hamlet" of Shakspeare taken to guard against it, the whole produc- are the same: the Odes of Pindar are the tions of that school will be consigned by future counterparts of those of Gray: the sculpture ages to oblivion. of Phidias and the painting of Raphael are nothing but the same mind working with different materials. The composition of Gibbon is directed by exactly the same principles as the sunsets of Claude: the battle-pieces of Napier and the banditti of Salvator are facsimiles of each other: the episodes of Livy and the "Good Shepherds” of Murillo produce the same emotions in the breast. Superficial readers will deride these observations, and ask what has painting external objects to do with the narration of human events? We would recommend them to spend twenty years in the study of either, and they will be at no loss to discover in what their analogy consists. We cannot admit that the magnitude or intricacy of a subject affords any excuse whatever for this defect. Livy did not fall into it in recording seven centuries of Roman victories; Gibbon did not fall into it in spanning the dark gulf which separates ancient from modern times. Claude produced one uniform impression, out of an infinity of details,-in some of his pieces, solitary and rural-in others crowded with harbours, shipping, and figures. Gaspar Poussin finished with scrupulous accuracy every leaf in his forest scenes; but he managed the light and the shade with such exquisite skill, that the charm of general effect is produced on the spectator's mind. Virgil produces one uniform impression from the homely details of his Georgics equally as the complicated events of the Æneid. Amidst an infinity of details and episodes, Tasso has with consummate skill preserved unity of emotion in his Jerusalem Delivered: Milton has not lost it even in recording the events of heaven and earth. Look at Nature:-every leaf, every pebble, every cliff, every blade of grass, in the most extensive scene, is finished with that perfection that characterizes all her works: yet what majesty and generality of effect in the mighty whole! That is the model of historical composition: every object should be worked out; nothing omitted; nothing carelessly touched: but a bright light should be thrown only on the brilliant events, the momentous changes; whole generations and centuries of monotonous even's cast into the shade, that is, slightly and rapidly passed over; and the most sedulous care taken to classify events into periods, in such a way as to form so many cells as it were in the memory of the reader, wherein to deposit the store of information afforded in regard to each. There is, in truth, only one really great style in history, as there is in poetry, painting, or music. Superficial observers speak of a new school of history, or a new mode of treating On this account we cannot admit that history is necessarily drier or less interesting than poetry or romance. True, it must give a faithful record of events: true, unless it does so it loses its peculiar and highest usefulness; but are we to be told that reality is less attractive than fiction? Are feigned distresses less poignant than real ones-imaginary virtues less ennobling than actual? The advantage of fiction consists in the narrower compass which it embraces, and consequently the superior interest which it can communicate by working up the characters, events, and scenes. That, doubtless, is a great advantage; but is it beyond the reach of history? May not the leading characters and events there be delineated with the same force, brilliancy, and fidelity to nature? Has it not the additional source of interest arising from the events being real?-an interest which all who tell stories to children will see exemplified in their constant question, “Is it true?" None can see more strongly than we do, that the highest aim and first duty of history is not to amuse, but to instruct the world: and that mere amusement or interest are of very secondary importance. But is amusement irreconcilable with instructioninterest with elevation? Is not truth best conveyed when it is clothed in an attractive garb? Is not the greatest danger which it runs that of being superseded by attractive fiction? How state many readers are familiar with English history | the crusades, with their vast effects, moral through Shakspeare and Scott, rather than social, and political, on the people and insti Hume and Lingard? That illustrates the risk tutions of the country, and the balance of of leaving truth to its unadorned resources. power among the different classes of society→ Was it not in parables that Supreme Wis-the expulsion of the English by the ability of dom communicated itself to mankind? The Philip Augustus, and the restoration of one wise man will never disdain the aid even of monarchy over the whole of France-the imagination and fancy, in communicating in- frightful atrocities of the religious war against struction. Recollect the words of Napoleon the Albigeois-the dreadful wars with England, -“C'est l'Imagination qui domine le monde." which lasted one hundred and twenty years, We have been insensibly led into these ob- from Edward III. to Henry V., with their imservations by observing in what manner Sis-mediate effect, analogous to that of the Wars mondi, Thierry, Barante, Michelet, and indeed of the Roses on this side of the Channel, in all the writers of the antiquarian and graphic destroying the feudal powers of the nobility— school, have treated the history of France. the consequent augmentation of the power of They are all men of powerful talent, brilliant the crown by the standing army of Charles imagination, unbounded research, and philo- | VII.-the indefatigable activity and sophic minds: their histories are so superior policy of Louis XI.-the brilliant but epheto any which preceded them, that, in reading meral conquests of Italy by the rise and prothem, we appear to be entering upon a new gress of Charles IX.-the rivalry of Francis I. and hitherto unknown world. But it is in the and Charles V.-the religious wars, with their very richness of their materials-the extent of desolating present effects, and lasting ultimate their learning-the vast stores of original ideas consequences-the deep and Machiavelian and authority they have brought to bear on the policy of Cardinal Richelieu, and its entire sucannals of the monarchy of Clovis-that we cess in concentrating the whole influence and discern the principal defect of their compo-power of government in Paris-the brilliant æra sitions. They have been well nigh over- of Louis XIV., with its Augustan halo, early whelmed by the treasures which themselves have dug up. So vast is the mass of original documents which they have consulted-of details and facts which they have brought to light-that they have too often lost sight of the first rule in the art of history-unity of composition. They have forgotten the necessity of a distinct separation of events in such a manner as to impress the general course of time upon the mind of their readers. They are accurate, graphic, minute in details; but the "tout ensemble" is too often forgotten, and the Temple of History made up rather of a chaos of old marbles dug up from the earth, and piled on each other without either order or symmetry, than of the majestic proportions and colossal masses of the Pantheon or St. Peter's. conquests, and ultimate disasters-the corruptions of the Regent Orleans and Louis XV.— the virtues, difficulties, and martyrdom of Louis XVI.-the commencement of the era of Revolutions, ending in the fanaticism of Robespierre and the carnage of the Empire-form a series of events and periods, spanning over the long course of eighteen centuries, and bringing down the annals of mankind from the Druids of Gaul and woods of Germany, to the intellect of La Place and the glories of Na poleon. To exhibit such a picture to the mind's eye in its just colours, due proportions, and real light-to trace so long a history fraught with such changes, glories, and disasters-to unfold, through so vast a progress, the unceasing development of the human mind, and simultaThe annals of no country are more distinctly neously with it the constant punishment of huseparated into periods than those of France:man iniquity,-is indeed a task worthy of the in none has the course of events more clearly greatest intellect which the Almighty has ever pointed out certain resting places, at which vouchsafed to guide and enlighten mankind. the historian may pause to show the progress of civilization and the growth of the nation. The first origin of the Gauls, and their social organization, before the conquest of the Romans-their institutions under those mighty conquerors, and the vast impress which their wisdom and experience, not less than their oppression and despotism, communicated to their character and habits-the causes which led to the decay of the empire of the Caesars, and let in the barbarians as deliverers rather than enemies into its vast provinces-the establishment of the monarchy of Clovis by these rude conquerors, and its gradual extension from the Rhine to the Pyrenees-the decay of the Merovingian dynasty, and the prostration In the outset of this noble task, Michelet of government under the "Rois Fainéans"—the has displayed very great ability; and the rise of the "Maires de Palais," and their final defects, as it appears to us, of his work, as establishment on the throne by the genius of it proceeds, strikingly illustrate the dangers Charlemagne-the rapid fall of his successors, to which the modern and graphic style of his and the origin of the Bourbon dynasty, con-tory is exposed. He is admirable, equally temporary with the Plantagenets of England-with Sismondi, Thierry, and Guizot, in the de It will never be adequately performed but by one mind: there is a unity which must pervade every great work of history, as of all the other Fine Arts; a succession of different hands breaks the thread of thought and mars the uniformity of effect as much in recording the annals of centuries, as in painting the passions of the heart, or the beauties of a single scene in nature. That it is not hopeless to look for such a mind is evident to all who recollect how Gibbon has painted the still wider expanse, and traced the longer story, of "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire:" but how often in a century does a Gibbon appear in the world! scription of the condition of Gaul under the objects at a distance in their just proportions Romans, and the causes which paralysed the and, not being distracted with details, he threw strength, and at length overthrew the power, broad lights and shadows over their great feaof the empire of the Cæsars. With a discri- tures; in the last, the objects were so near the minating eye, and a master's hand, he has eye, and the lights so perplexed and frequent, drawn the different character of the Celtic and that he has in some degree lost sight of all geGerman races of mankind, and the indelible neral effect in his composition, or at least failed impress which they have severally communi- in conveying any lucid impression to the cated to their descendants. The early settle-reader's mind. ment of the German tribes in Gaul, and the amalgamation of the victorious savage with the vanquished civilized race, is drawn in the spirit of a philosopher, and with a graphic power. If he had continued the work as it was thus begun, it would have left nothing to be desired. In common with all later writers who have observed much or thought deeply on human affairs, M. Michelet is a firm believer in the inherent and indelible influence of race, both on the character and destiny of nations. His observations on this subject, especially on the peculiarities of the Celtic race, and their vital difference from the German, form one of the most interesting and valuable parts of his work. He traces the same character through the Scotch Highlanders, the mountaineers of Cumberland and Wales, the native Irish, the inhabitants of Brittany, and the mountaineers of Gascony and Bearn. On the other hand, the same national characteristics may be observed in the German race, under whatever climate and circumstances; in Saxony as in England; in the Swiss mountains as in the Dutch marshes; in the crowded marts of Flanders as in the solitude of the American forest. Of the inherent character of the Celtic race, he gives the following animated description : But when he comes down to later times, and above all when he becomes involved in the endless maze and minute details of the Chronicles and early French Memoirs, the work assumes a different character. Though you still, in occasional expressions, see the reflections of the philosopher-in frequent pictures, the eye of the painter-yet the narrative in general is flooded by an ocean of details. Fatigued with the endless maze of intrigues, wars, tumults, tortures, crusades, and crimes, which succeed one another in rapid succession, the reader in despair shuts the volume, with hardly any recollection of the thread of events. He recollects only that almost all the kings appear to have been wicked, almost all the nobles "The mixed races of Celts who are called ambitious, almost all the priests cruel, almost French, can be rightly understood only by a all the people ferocious. There is nothing study of the pure Celts, the Bretons and Welsh, which tends so strongly to make us satisfied the Scotch Highlanders and Irish peasants. with our own lot, and inclined to return thanks While France, undergoing the yoke of repeatto Heaven for having cast it in our age, as ed invasion, is marching through successive the study of the crimes, disasters, and sufferings | ages from slavery to freedom, from disgrace sufferings of those which have preceded it. to glory, the old Celtic races, perched on their But still "the mighty maze is not without native mountains, or sequestered in their far a plan." In the midst of these hideous crimes | and atrocities, of this general anguish and suffering, fixed laws were operating, a silent progress was going forward, and Providence was patiently and in silence working out its ultimate designs by the free agency of an infinity of separate individuals. A great system of moral retribution was unceasingly at work; and out of the mingled virtues and vices, joys and sorrows, crimes and punishment, of previous centuries, were slowly forming the elements of the great and glorious French monarchy. It is in the development of this magnificent progress, and in the power of exhibiting it in lucid colours to the eye of the spectator, that Michelet is chiefly deficient in his later volumes. This seems at first sight inexplicable, as in the earlier ones, relating to Gaul under the Romans, the settlement of the Franks, and the early kings of the Merovingian race, his powers of generalization and philosophic observation are eminently conspicuous. They form, accordingly, by much the most interesting and instructive part of his history. But a closer examination will at once unfold the cause of this difference, and point to the chief changes of the graphic and antiquarian school of history. He generalized in the earlier volumes, because his materials were scanty; he has not done so in the later ones, because they were redundant. In the first instance, he saw distant isles, have remained faithful to the poetic independence of their barbarous life, till surprised by the rude hand of foreign conquest. It was in this state that England surprised, overwhelmed them ;-vainly, however, has the Anglo-Saxon pressed upon themthey repel his efforts as the rocks of Brittany or Cornwall the surges of the Atlantic. The sad and patient Judea, which numbered its ages by its servitude, has not been more sternly driven from Asia. But such is the tenacity of the Celtic race, such the principle of life in nations, that they have endured every outrage, and still preserve inviolate the manners and customs of their forefathers. Race of granite! Immovable, like the huge Druidical blocks which they still regard with superstitious veneration. "One might have expected that a race which remained for ever the same, while all was changing around it, would succeed in the end in conquering by the mere inert force of resistance, and would impress its character on the world. The very reverse has happened,the more the race has been isolated, the more it has fallen into insignificance. To remain original, to resist all foreign intermixture, to repel all the ideas or improvements of the stranger, is to remain weak and isolated in the world. There is the secret of the Celtic racethere is the key to their whole history. It has |