6 than itself why such an ebullition could not have taken place in another country. But if less openly spoken against, it may be justly doubted whether Prince Albert would have been as truly valued and appreciated in his own land. He who set little store even by real aristocracy of birth, and whose motto was the Progress and Improvement of the Public, would have found no enviable lot among the Kreutz Partei' of an empty and pauperised noblesse, existing only by the exclusion of all other classes save their own. Not even Science, as we have seen, respected him there. The written words of one supposed to be so enlightened as Humboldt, may well be set against all the voices of the vulgar herd, high and low, here, and are in truth infinitely more to be condemned. But let us not measure the rewards to such a mind by any standard lower than itself. He suffered injustice; he bore disappointment; but his joy no man taketh from him! Seen by the light which his peerless life has shed upon his position, it now appears the noblest that a noble mind could desire. His not the applause and homage; his not the pomps and the vanities of Sovereignty; but his the wisdom and the forethought, the lofty, manly, Christian devotion which surrounded a woman's crown, as with an earthly Providence. This has been a joint reign in all but the name; and let us pray that it may be so still; for not even death can sever that long intimacy of two hearts and two wills which God has joined together. Alone, the royal widow must bear in time to face her loving subjects; alone, her loving and most deeply-sorrowing subjects must bear to gaze upon her august person; but the knowledge of that example none can take from her or from us. For his sake the Queen is already sublimely struggling to fulfil her duties; for his sake shall we not doubly strive to do ours? We can conceive no higher human spectacle than that of our Sovereign Lady thus bowing her head to the will of God, and raising it again by the Divine aid. If we have loved her in her years of virtuous happiness, shall we not venerate her now? And this, too, will be his doing, who has done so much for her, and for us! So that his influence is yet felt in the workings of that sorrow of which we venture to foresee the hallowed uses. ART. ART. VII.-1. Lives of Lord Castlereagh and Sir Charles Stewart. By Sir Archibald Alison. London. 1861. 2. Correspondence, Despatches, and other Papers of Viscount Castlereagh. Edited by his Brother. Third Series. London. 1856. 3. Histoire du Consulat et de l'Empire. Par M. Thiers. Vols. xviii., xix. Paris. 1861. 4. Supplementary Despatches, Correspondence, and Memoranda of Arthur Duke of Wellington. Vol. viii. London. 1861. E are accustomed in the present day to strange historical ideas upon the guilt or virtue of the great men of the past. But it seems hard of belief that this process should be already necessary in the case of a statesman whose career is so recent as Lord Castlereagh's. Yet the mythical mist which rises under the influence of the strong passions of party had already gathered round his name before he had ceased to live. He was even then associated in the minds of a large part of the community with a cause for which he had no sympathy; charged with the responsibility of measures which he had done his best to avert ; and vilified for hostility to the liberties of mankind which it had been the main work of his life to vindicate. The energies of a whole school of political writers were devoted to the task of persuading his countrymen that he was the English representative of the Holy Alliance, and an accomplice in every freak of tyranny that was perpetrated from Warsaw to Cadiz. Even after his labours in his country's service had brought his life to a premature and terrible close, the animosity of his enemies did not relent. They had many things to avenge which political partisans are slow to forgive. He had not only excluded them for many years from power, but he had succeeded in spite of the prophecies of evil with which they had pursued his policy. He had attained the objects which they had declared impracticable, and carried through to a glorious triumph the measures which they had stigmatised as imbecile. Forced to admit the success of his policy, they were driven to avenge themselves upon his motives. Against criticism of this kind a statesman who has the foreign policy of an empire to conduct is almost defenceless. The obscurity in which diplomatic transactions are necessarily shrouded will probably conceal from the public eye the circumstances upon which his justification rests. The necessity of sparing the feelings of powerful monarchs or ministers elsewhere, and of hiding the faults or follies of men whom it would be injurious to English interests to offend, often forces him to be silent, where silence is interpreted interpreted by his enemies as confession. Lord Castlereagh was not the man to jeopardise the meanest English interest for the sake of refuting some calumniator of his own good name. The tyranny of the Southern monarchies, and the assumptions of the Holy Alliance, had aroused an abundance of bitter and resentful feeling among educated Englishmen. It was easy to persuade men that the minister who always, as became his office, spoke in public with courtesy of the Allies of England, shared their maxims of government, and acquiesced in their policy to secondary states. The impression was strengthened by the measures of domestic repression which it fell to him to defend in the House of Commons, and which, even when levelled against assassinationplots, are always unpopular in England. Thus the belief that Lord Castlereagh was the arch enemy of freedom all over the world was widely spread, and came to be almost an article of faith with the school of writers and public men who prepared the English soil for the Reform Bill, and reaped its earliest fruits. A lie, however, according to the Chinese proverb, has no legs, and in course of time this article of popular belief began to lose its footing. Those who once despairingly considered a Whig administration to be about as probable as a thaw in Zembla,' have since by force of habit come to look on themselves as possessing a kind of tenant-right to office. And this improvement in their political climate has effected an evident thaw in their sentiments. They feel towards calumniators of administrations and critics of foreign policy much as usurpers are said to feel to the tyrannicides to whom they owe their thrones. Moreover, the just Nemesis which generally decrees that partisans shall be forced to do in office precisely that which they most loudly decried in opposi tion, has not failed to dog the footsteps of Lord Castlereagh's detractors. Since the Whigs have passed Irish Arms Acts and suspended the Habeas Corpus Act, their partisans have been less keen to infer from similar measures an inveterate hostility to freedom. And after the exposition which the model Republic has presented to the world of the duty of the friends of freedom in the presence of domestic revolt, we shall probably hear less for the future of Lord Castlereagh's milder measures of repression. Facts also have told heavily in his favour. Recent events have indisposed the mass of writers on the Liberal side to formulate so precisely as of old the wickedness of Transalpine powers interposing in the internal politics of Italy. No one now dreams of professing that sympathy for the extinguished nationalities of Norway and Genoa, which formed the basis of so many bitter invectives against him five-and-forty years ago. And, after the experience of many revolutions, his hostility hostility to the secret societies and socialist conspirators of the Continent is not viewed by Whig magnates with the uncom promising condemnation which they hurled at it in days when the disenchantment of politicians had not progressed as far as it has now. We are inclined, therefore, to hope that Sir Archibald Alison is right in believing that the period is a favourable one for clearing up the delusions that prevail in respect to Lord Castlereagh's character and motives. It is time to substitute for the popular myth a juster estimate of the merits of the great statesman who bore the chief part in rescuing Europe from the modern "scourge of God." Sir Archibald has many qualifications for the task. The study of a lifetime has made him familiar with the period of history to which it relates; and since his History was composed, a considerable mass of new materials have been given to the world. There was room for a narrative which should work up the Castlereagh correspondence in a connected form, and present in an English dress the matter which M. Thiers's industry has disinterred from the archives at Paris. These documents he has welded into his biography with his usual pains-taking elaboration; and an additional interest is given to the work by a number of hitherto unpublished letters which he has been permitted to select from the papers of the late Lord Londonderry. An impartial biographer he cannot with accuracy be called, for his mind could hardly have escaped bias from the feelings with which he regarded those to whom Lord Castlereagh was dear. But his labours have all the heartiness of a labour of love, and their partiality is perhaps not out of place as a counterpoise to the efforts of those whose judgments have been warped by a bias more marked and less commendable. His brush opportunely fills in the lights that belonged to a character which so many writers have striven to paint in shadows almost unrelieved.* Lord Castlereagh filled several important positions, and took part in many great events; but prudent panegyrists will confine their attention to his career as Foreign Secretary during the ten closing years of his life. It is upon them that his title to fame must exclusively rest. The other transactions in which he was mixed up hardly reflect much light upon his name. Whatever he was set to do, he did it well and honestly with all his might but it was not always that which suited him the best, or in which *As a second edition will probably be called for at an early period, Sir Archibald will permit us to suggest that the printer has occasionally taken very unwarrantable liberties both with names and dates, and that the proof-sheets therefore require a more than ordinarily careful revision. the the greatest credit was to be won. A certain admiration is due to skill in whatever occupation it is displayed, and therefore we cannot refuse to admire the skill with which he effected the Irish Union. But still we should prefer to dwell on any other display of administrative ability than that which consists of bribing knaves into honesty, and fools into common sense. It is perfectly true that we may fairly throw upon his superiors the responsibility of the policy that he was charged to carry out. In emergencies so critical as that which followed the rebellion of 1798, all faithful servants of the Crown were bound to set almost a military value upon the virtue of prompt obedience. And it is also true that we must try even the conduct of his superiors in some degree by a military test. In the supreme struggle of social order against anarchy, we cannot deny to the champions of civilised society the moral latitude which is by common consent accorded to armed men fighting for their country against a foreign foe. It is no reproach to a General on active service that he has used either bribes or spies in furtherance of his operations against the enemy. There are emergencies when the conspirator at home is more dangerous to all that society holds dear than any enemy abroad. No casuistry, however subtle, can draw a tenable line of distinction between the two cases, so that the weapon which is lawful for the soldier shall be forbidden to the statesman. A moment's reflection upon considerations such as these will serve to clear Lord Castlereagh's memory from any imputation in consequence of the part which he took in carrying into effect Mr. Pitt's great idea. The independence of the Irish Parliament was a position from which it was absolutely indispensable to dislodge the enemy if the integrity of the empire was to be preserved. It naturally never occurred to him that he was doing anything contrary to morality or honour in bribing the garrison to open the gates. Still such employments are more inevitable than honourable; and the achievements to which they lead are not held to confer renown. He reaped a reward, richer than renown, in the blessings he conferred on the two nations whom he has made one. This generation, that has watched the growing prosperity of Ireland, and the calamities into which other empires have been plunged by co-ordinate and independent legislatures under one crown, ought to remember rather with gratitude than with cavil the manliness and fidelity with which he performed his distasteful office. His war administration is another portion of Lord Castlereagh's career which his admirers would wish to pass over with a light hand. His selection of Sir Arthur Wellesley, over the heads of many older officers, to command the Spanish army, in spite of the |