revolution was inevitable without the passage of the bill, and it passed. There was no other choice in the case. We remarked the same unconsciousness of the inevitable tendency of the spirit of the age in which he lived, when speaking of the French Revolution. Again and again he puts his finger on the very point where the revolution could have been arrested with the utmost ease-nay, in one instance he asserts that the Vendean peasantry could have marched into Paris and re-erected the Bourbon throne. He seems to have about the same idea of the providence of God in this struggle of man for his rights, that Moreau had of it in battle, when he said he usually found it favored the strong battalions.

A revolution in France was as inevitable as fate itself. Oppression and suffering had reached the point of despair. Beyond that they never go. In the same spirit and in the same ignorance, he speaks of the Reform Bill, starting with the principle, that the true idea of government is to have the "greatest amount of Freedom with the least minimum of Democracy," and that clamors for reform should never be granted except when there are real grievances; he condemns the expediency of the passage of the Reform Bill. It was, he declares, a mere aggression of the democratic spirit which should have been met and stifled at once; for to yield to its demands, is only learning it to make greater demands, as subsequent history has shown. This theory is correct, when applied to a feudal government. We do not object to the logic, but to the belief that it could be practically carried out. The aristocracy of England reasoned precisely in the same way, and soundly, too; but they found a spirit abroad stronger than their logic. The foe they had to contend with was not one of bone and muscle, that could be thrust through with the bayonet or suffocated in a prison. Macauley knew it, when he thundered forth in the House of Commons, "through Parliament or over Parliament this bill will pass." Earl Grey knew it when he resigned the premiership because the bill could not pass, and when recalled, made its passage the condition of his return, declaring that otherwise he could not save England from a civil war. Of this stern necessity, this absolute omnipotence of the spirit that is now abroad in the world, Mr. Alison seems entirely unconscious. His remedy for Democracy, in

all its stages and movements, is physical force, and, so far as his doctrines have influence on the Continent of Europe, they will augment the present evils, and hence increase the violence of their ultimate cure.

It is a relief to turn from these events, in the narrative of which Mr. Alison's prejudiced feelings so bias his judgment and truth, to those stirring scenes which made Europe for nearly thirty years one wide battle-field. While Mr. Alison stands and looks off on the continent, after Bonaparte's star arose in the troubled heavens, his English sympathies do not put such obstacles in the way of relating facts. Especially after Bonaparte shows his aristocratic tendencies, does he exhibit for him a high admiration. The heroic character of the conqueror of so many battles, necessarily wakens, in one of Mr. Alison's poetic temperament, an interest which is quite strong enough to secure fair treatment from him. He does Napoleon full justice, and if he errs at all, does so in making him too unlike ordinary mortals. In the description of a battle we have never seen Mr. Alison's superior. Before his excited imagination the field rises again with all its magnificent array. He looks on the formation of the line, the moving of the columns, the charge of the cavalry, and all the uproar and thunder of battle, with the eye of a poet. He beholds nothing but heroism in the commonest soldier, if he but fights bravely, and the trade of war is to him a splendid tragedy. This vividness of imagination and excitement of feeling give to his descriptions a life, that, for the time, make them passing realities. They throw over his narrative also the charm of freshness; and his style, which, when he endeavors merely to write elegantly, is bombastic, becomes clear and vigorous. How much allowance is to be made for his imagination, is not so easy to say, and we suspect that most of his readers would rather be wrong on some details than lose the vividness of the picture. The mere historic parts being only a compilation from other works, they owe their chief excellence to the charm of Mr. Alison's style. The work also is the only English one devoted to those thirty years that witnessed the rise and glory and downfall of the French empire. Perhaps no better will be written, yet Mr. Alison's owes more than is generally conceded, to the period he has chosen for his history.

Thirty years of such stirring scenes, lofty achievements, and awful disaster, the earth never before witnessed. First comes the French revolution, that terrific explosion, that buried the king, the throne, the aristocracy, and a million of men in one bloody grave. Its scenes of violence and massacre, its exhibitions of valor and affection, and desperation and ferocity, make the difficulty of the historian to consist in knowing what to reject rather

than what to choose.

Next rises before us that strange being, so powerful for evil or for good, Napoleon Bonaparte, who afterward scarcely leaves the field of vision, till he disappears forever in the war-cloud of Waterloo. The campaign of Italy follows in quick succession, with its bloody field of Marengo and Novi and Arcola and Lodi. Scarcely has the battle-cloud swept from the empire of the Cesars, revealing a new dynasty there, before the gleaming of French lances is seen around the pyramids of Egypt. Spain is covered with battle-fields the Alps with mighty armies, struggling where the foot of the chamois scarce dares to tread. Jena and Austerlitz and Wagram and Borodino, rise, one after another, before our astonished sight, and Moscow's towers blaze over the army of the Empire. Never before were such materials furnished, ready made, to the historian. All varieties of war, from the ferocious and headlong violence of the mob round the palaces of Paris, to the encounter of the steadiest armies of Europe-from the wild charge of the Cossack, on the plains of Russia, to the fiery valor of the Turkish cavalry, in the deserts of Egypt, we see every shade and degree and quality of combat. The same is true of the scenery amid which all this is laid. Amid the glaciers of the Alps and the vineyards of Italy on the sierras of Spain and the sands of Egypt-amid the heat of the desert and the snows of a Russian winter on the Nieman and Danube and Rhine and Tiber and ancient Nile, is seen the march of armies and heard the thunder of battle. And seldom does the world witness such distinguished men as moved amid these scenes. There was Pitt and Burke and Fox and Talleyrand and Ney and Murat and Moreau and Lannes and Macdonald and Wellington and Bonaparte. And never, in modern history, were such results accomplished. A common soldier rises to the empire of half of Europe-thrones are overthrown,

kings discrowned, dynasties changed, and the oldest monarchies of Europe on their knees before a single adventurer. The strange spectacle of kings searching round their overturned thrones for their fallen crowns-princes begging for bread through the civilized world, and Europe shaking to the tread of a single man, is here presented for the first time to our astonished view. We behold the power of kings broken, and hear the final knell of tyranny rung. And all this is seen amid the tumult of battle, where prodigies of valor are performed unparalleled in the history of man. The peasants of Vendee fight and fall about their homes, with the heroism of the Spartan band at Thermopylæ. Bonaparte drags his artillery over the Alpine pass that Hannibal trod before him. Macdonald fights with the avalanche that bears down whole companies by his side, or leads his mighty column straight into the murderous fire of the enemy, leaving in his path a swath of his dead followers, as he moves, till only fifteen hundred are left around him. Undaunted and unscathed, he still pushes the torn head of his column into the enemy's lines, knowing that he carries an empire with him. Murat and the fiery Ney lead on their strong battalions where the bravest shrink; and, last of all, come the heroic courage, the reckless daring, and awful carnage of Waterloo. These scenes no pen can paint better than Mr. Alison's; and had he but shown himself superior to the narrow prejudices of a bigot, and taken the trouble to inform himself on some points where his feelings have made his facts, his history would have been as reliable as it is entertaining.

We might select from these pages descriptions that are perfect pictures, remaining among the distinct things of memory. There is Arcola and Bonaparte standing on the bridge with the standard in his hand, refusing to stir from the storm of shot that swept where he stood, till borne back by his own grenadiers. There is Wagram, with the island in the Danube, converted, for a while, into a theatre, where genius wrought like magic, and beside it the battle-field, with Bonaparte on his milk-white charger, slowly riding backwards and forwards before his lines that winced to the murderous fire of the enemy's artillery-himself undaunted and unharmed, though the grape-shot rattled like hail-stones around him. There, too, are Eylau, Borodino, and Austerlitz, and there the mighty

columns of France disappearing, one after another, in the heavy snow-drifts of Russia. These are vivid sketches; so also is the last interview of Bonaparte with Metternich, before the latter joined the allies. We see the bonfires kindled along the Bohemian mountains, announcing the joyful intelligence to the host that lay encamped in the valley beyond. The mad ride of Bonaparte to Paris, to save the city that had already fallen into the hands of the enemy, his uncontrollable impetuosity that drove on his carriage till the axletrees took fire, his fiery and characteristic soliloquy on the way, are all admirably drawn.

But the campaign in Egypt brings out again his English sympathies, and his statistics differ, of course, from those of the French. So in the peninsular campaign, he looks at the deeds and achieve ments of the English, through a magnifying glass of huge dimensions, and at those of the French through the same glass inverted. He may think, however, he compensates for this by reversing the process, when he surveys the numbers, position, and comparative strength of the two armies. This double method of magnifying and dwindling, makes quite a difference in the impression conveyed of this whole campaign. The same bias of his judgment by his feelings, is exhibited in his account of the battle of Waterloo. No one but an Englishman ever stood on that battle-field with the map of it in his hand-and even the English account of it before him-without being convinced, that but for the timely arrival of Blucher, Wellington would have been defeated. Yet Mr. Alison declares that Bonaparte would have been repulsed had not Blucher arrived, and all that the latter accomplished was to convert the defeat into a total rout. The only fact he predicates this assertion on, is the repulse of the imperial guard before the junction of Blucher. But in the first place, Bonaparte would not have made that desperate charge at the time he did, but for the approach of the Prussians. It was done to force the English lines and place himself between the two armies, that he might fight them separate, as he did at Novi. If Grouchy had kept Blucher in check, Bonaparte would have soon broke down the already exhausted English squares, and at a later moment led on his fresh indomitable guard to complete the victory. In the second place, although the guard was routed,

11

they formed again into two immense squares, and endeavored to stay the reversed tide of battle, and if Blucher had not been there with his fifty thousand fresh troops, Wellington could not have followed up his success, and would have been compelled to remain as he had done all day, on the defensive. Wellington himself, in his dispatches, says: "I should not do justice to my feelings, or to Marshal Blucher and the Prussian army, if I did not attribute the successful result of this arduous day to the cordial and timely assistance I received from them." (Wellington versus Alison.) If there is one thing clear to the impartial mind, when standing on that field, it is that if Blucher had staid away, as did Grouchy, or Grouchy came up, as did Blucher, that Wellington would have been utterly routed. It was a desperate movement of the British general, to make the stand he did, and he knew it, and nothing but unforeseen circumstances saved him from ruin. The "stars" fought against Bonaparte on that day; his career was run, and the hour of retribution had come. But with the whole continental struggle we have nothing to do. That Mr. Alison should often disagree with Jomini and other French historians, is natural. We do not profess to have his knowledge of military tactics, for there is not a battle lost by the allies in which he does not place his finger on the very point where the issue turned and where ordinary clear-sightedness could not have redeemed the day. In reading his reflections on every engagement, the reader is forced constantly to exclaim, "what a pity Mr. Alison could not have been there he could have so easily changed the result."

We have had to do simply with the impressions conveyed by this historyits philosophy and logic concerning the great question of republicanism; for it would be impossible to embrace the whole work in the limits of a single article. Besides, the struggles of armies and nations may be falsified with comparative impunity, but to be untrue when treating of the conflict between the two great principles of democracy and despotism, whose results are to reach remotest ages and affect the most intimate relations of society, is the worst crime a historian can commit in the present crisis of the world. We have gone over the history of Ireland and the French revolution, to show the strength of Mr. Alison's

bigoted monarchical feelings, and how utterly unable or unwilling he is to see the truth when it conflicts with his prejudices. If his sympathies plunge him into inextricable blunders when writing of those nations, we are prepared for almost any amount of error in his accounts of the United States and the Last War.

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The chapter which opens our history is is a specimen of his attempt at fine writing when he is not really excited. The whole of it is fitter for a popular declamation, or second rate magazine, than grave history. Does he wish to say that the waters of the Mexican gulf are clear, he says, "the extraordinary clearness of the water reveals to the astonished mariner the magnitude of its abysses, and discloses, even at the depth of thirty fathoms, the gigantic vegetation which, even so far beneath the surface, is drawn forth by the attraction of a vertical sun." Does he wish to state that beautiful islands are sprinkled over its bosom, he says, "in the midst of these glassy waves, rarely disturbed by a ruder breath than the zephyrs of spring, [wholly untrue by the way,] an archipelago of perfumed islands is placed, which repose like baskets of flowers on the tranquil surface of the ocean." Does he wish to inform us that grapes grow in profusion on its shores, he says, grapes are so plenty upon every shrub, that the surge of the ocean, as it lazily rolls in upon the shore with the quiet winds of summer, dashes its spray upon the clusters." This might adorn the maiden speech of a college sophomore, or be a very fine paragraph with which to open a chapter of a novel, but in this place it is the merest "prose run mad." Alike inappropriate is his long description of our continent and equally long dissertation upon its early inhabitants. Such a duty belongs to one who writes our history from the beginning, and not to him who simply cuts out the Last War for his topic. Indeed, Mr. Alison seems so profoundly impressed with the magnitude and importance of his views on matters entirely irrelevant to to his main purpose, that he takes vast semi-circles to bring them all in. After dilating with more poetry than profundity on our savages, and describing our vast primeval forests, where, to use his own words, "the hatchet of the civilized man has never been heard," he comes to our present characteristics. At first, he endeavors to account for the vast difference between the condition of the inhabitants

of the Canadian provinces and those of our Northern States. We should expect here to find something said of our different forms of government, and the different character of those who landed on Plymouth Rock and those who first settled along the northern shores of the St. Lawrence. Not a bit of it-the chief cause of our pre-eminence in the States, he declares to be owing to our "paper credit.” And yet he makes this very "paper credit," that has wrought such wonders in our political and social condition, one of the great inherent evils of our republican institutions. His philosophy is as flexible as his facts, and bends to any absurdity, however great, if it will only teach the one great lesson he is so profoundly impressed with the evils of republicanism. Scarcely is he delivered of this sage remark, before he tells us that labor is so much in demand here and so liberally rewarded, "that a widow with eight children is sought after and married as an heiress," The reader has scarcely time to awake from this new and astounding fact, before he goes on to state, that the American agriculturist is wholly unlike those of all other lands, in that he has no attachment to the soil he occupies. The wandering propensities of our farmers are so strong, that he calls our social system "THE NOMADE AGRICULTURAL STATE." If he made this assertion so strongly, in order to justify him in applying the new title he puts in capitals, we have nothing to say. But if he intended it for a fact, he has been very unfortunate in the authorities he has consulted. Hereditary feeling is also "unknown," so that there is no attachment to the old homestead or the old fixtures of our birthplace. So "wholly unknown," Mr. Alison declares it to be, that “even family portraits, pictures of beloved parents, are often not framed, as it is well understood that at the death of the head of the family they will be sold and turned into dollars to be divided among the children!" We doubt whether even Mrs. Trollope would swear to this statement, and Basil Hall himself would refuse to stand as authority for it.

But having proved this deplorable state of our country by his own assertion, he adduces Mungo Park as evidence that even the most degraded and savage negro tribes of Africa possess, and in an eminent degree, this attachment so "wholly unknown" among us. This is truly a distressing picture of our condi

tion. Our large farming population is only a slightly improved breed of the Arabs, and go wandering about without a home-without any of those local attachments which make certain spots "Palestines and Meccas of the mind?"carrying their unframed pictures in their hands, haunted by the fear of the "dollars." Not wholly destitute of natural affection, which even the tiger and jackall have in common with us, we do afford "the pictures of our beloved parents," running the dreadful risk of the final partition-but the frames, the plain cherry wood frames, costing four and sixpence, we refuse to buy, lest they be lost at last, by being divided among some "widow and eight children." There is, doubtless, some profound philosophic principle lying at the bottom of the distinction to be made between the cost of the pictures and the cost of the frames, which Mr. Alison discovered by applying his monarchical stethescope to the breast of democracy, and he has wronged us, and wronged the world, by not incorporating it in his history. It is fortunate the two facts of a "widow with eight children" being an " heiress," and our strong Arabic tendencies, are put together; otherwise, we might be overrun with poor English widows and their numerous progeny. Some few of these, from Leeds, Manchester, and Birmingham, we have seen in our manufacturing districts, with even more than "eight children," and, heaven knows, they looked like anything but "heiresses." Tribe after tribe of our nomadic farmers had wandered past them without grasp ing the fortune. When our history becomes as old as the Roman history now is, with what astonishment will men read of a state of society where a "widow and eight children" were looked upon as some "rich freighted argosy.”

But notwithstanding the high price of labor, and the general competence that prevails in the rural districts, he adds, as an offset, that "pauperism exists to a distressing extent in many of the first peopled states along the sea-coast, and nearly all the great commercial towns of the Union; poor-rates are in consequence generally established, and benevolence is

Penitentiary,

taxed nearly as severely as in the old monarchies and dense population of the European nations.” This statement, standing alone and without explanation, is untrue; for though as much money may be paid by the benevolent to relieve the poor in some of our cities, as in the cities of Europe, there is not a fourth part of the demand for it. Besides, poor-rates are not established at all in the sense conveyed by the passage. The poorrates of England are a thing unknown here. But, granting it all, from whence come these paupers ? From the old monarchies, and out of the dense population of the European nations ;"—a fact Mr. Alison did not find it convenient to state. To say nothing of the continental nations that make a system of despatching their paupers and criminals to the United States, it needs but to look at England herself to find ample cause for the pauperism that is forced upon us. In one year, between June of 1835 and July of 1836, the Law Commissioners of England reported that seven thousand and seventy-five paupers were expatriated at the cost of $196,000. The proportion that came here it is not difficult to conjecture. Lord Stanley declared, not long since, in the English Parliament, that for five years, excepting 1838, the average amount of emigration to British America alone was from 75,000 to 80,000 annually. In 1840, there were 90,700 left England. In 1841, there were 118,475. In 1842, 15,000 left in April alone, and during the three months ending last June, 25,008 arrived in New York city. The whole number, for the past year, is estimated at 59,000 to New York city alone. How many of these are paupers, or become so, may be inferred from the fact, that out of 47,571 aliens arrived in one year, 38,057, soon after they landed, had no occupation. Place these facts beside the following table published in the American Quarterly Review of 1838:"In the city of New York, the following extracts have been obtained, illustrative of the comparative amount of poverty and crime, as existing among native Americans and foreigners, from all parts of the United States.

Alms House (adults),

1,355