delight over the tomes of Mr. D'Israeli, highly lauded, though these have been, by some of our unreflecting contemporaries. He has affected to write grave history in the language of a court journal, and to put forward the most ordinary transactions with an air of mystery, as if they were the result of secret intrigues and combinations, which he alone has had the good fortune to discover. But when the students, of whose better fate we speak, open the volumes of Dr. Lingard, they will no longer associate ideas of labour and pain with the acquisition of historical knowledge. Beguiled by the concise, graceful, and transparent language, in which relations of even the every-day occurrences of human life are clothed by his cunning hand; admiring the judicial integrity, with which conflicting evidence is everywhere balanced, and the masterly power of discrimination, by which, often from the thickest confusion, he extricates the valuable truth, they will go on from reign to reign, gathering the knowledge and experience which arise from a thorough acquaintance with those men, who, in former ages, exercised a marked influence upon the character of our nation. Then, but not until then, will they be able to peruse with advantage the classic work of Hallam, and the series of essays upon our constitution and laws, as well as upon the social and commercial progress of England, which, under the title of its History, Sir James Mackintosh is now, happily, presenting to the world. When reviewing the first volume of this work upon a former occasion, we feel that we judged the narrative portions of it perhaps with too much strictness. We expected, that in those portions the author would have displayed the same commanding genius and power, which shine with so much lustre in his commentaries upon the great charter, the rise of the house of commons, and other important subjects of that nature. But, in truth, we had not fully penetrated the real design of the distinguished author, which seems to be confined to the history of the constitution of England. The wars in which it has been engaged from time to time, have no charm whatever for his mind; he is altogether unskilled in the language of military description. He thinks it inconsistent with the dignity of his leading subject, to linger, even for a moment, upon a field of battle abroad, or of civil strife at home. A recorded misrepresentation of a date, or of the means by which a victory was achieved, is sufficient to turn him away from the theme, as if the whole were a tissue of falsehood, or at least of doubt, which it would not be worth his while to unravel. His legal education, and the philosophical and critical inclinations of his mind, fortunately for posterity, urge him constantly to the nobler field of speculation and reflection, where he usually succeeds in collecting a rich harvest of practical truth, unassailable principles of liberty, and many of those lessons of wisdom and of charity, which are intimately connected with the happiness and utility of private, as well as of public life.

If a reader were to form a hasty judgment of this second volume, by the manner in which the wars of the roses, constituting the early portion of it, are related, he would unquestionably pronounce it a failure. Facts are given in a confused and grovelling style, as if the object were to produce rather a bad list of contents, than a history. Accounts of battles, upon which the fate of the nation hung, are dismissed in a line, merely stating the conflict and the result, and leaving scarcely any impression behind that "such things were.' But we must content ourselves throughout to forego all the pleasures that spring from tragic emotions. We cannot justly appreciate the labours of Sir James, unless we sit down to them with a mind as tempered as his own, and prepared on all occasions rather to discuss with him a debatable question of constitutional law, than the movements of an army.

The volume commences with the accession of the sixth Harry, when a mere puling infant, to a throne upon which he was physically incapable of sitting, and by whose command, although he could not yet speak, a Parliament was summoned, and a regency constituted, with all the circumstances of grave mockery and solemn falsehood, which characterise the acts done in the name of minor kings.' It is noticed, that upon the occasion of his marriage in 1445, the citizens of London already began to mingle the display of their commercial wealth with the gorgeous magnificence of princes and lords.' The rebellion of Jack Čade is told in fewer words than are bestowed upon the discussion of the difference between a peculiar and a general pardon, and of the legal effect of the amnesty, in violation of which that bold chieftain and several of his followers suffered death. The rivalries of the dukes of York and Somerset, the leaders of the adverse factions, which, for so many years, disturbed the country and drained it of its best blood, are narrated with a continued effort at brevity, which often becomes affectation. But this we must forgive, seeing the minute attention that is paid to every particular connected with the Duke of York's claim to the crown, and his assumption of the regal power, and with the conduct of the Parliament upon these trying emergencies. Again, there is little in the author's account of Warwick, the celebrated "king-maker," that corresponds with the historical associations which have long been linked with his memory; and all that we read of the famous battle of Tewkesbury, in which the pride of the Lancastrians was for ever laid prostrate, is, that it concluded this sanguinary war.' But, by way of compensation, we are indulged with some ethical reflections on the character of the ill-fated Harry. Our compassion,' says Sir James, for the misfortunes of such a person, would hardly go beyond the boundary of instinctive pity, if an extraordinary provision had not been made by nature to strengthen the social affections. We are so framed to feel as if all harmlessness arose from a pure and gentle mind; and something of the beauty of intentional goodness is lent to those who

only want the power of doing ill. The term innocence is ambiguously employed for impotence and abstinence. A man in a station such as that of a king, which is generally surrounded with power and dignity, is apt to be considered as deliberately abstaining from evil when he inflicts none, although he be really withheld, as in the case of Henry, by an incapacity to do either good or harm. Nature, by an illusion more general and more momentous, benevolently beguiles us into a tenderness for the beings who most need it, inspiring us with the fond imagination, that the innocence of children is the beautiful result of mature reason and virtue; a sentiment partaking of the same nature, with the feelings which dispose the good man to be merciful to his beast.' Now, with all possible respect for Sir James Mackintosh, we conceive that this passage might be cited as an example of his extreme tendency to cast every thing in the mould of his philosophy.

The author removes from Richard III., the odium of having murdered the deposed and imbecile Harry, merely upon the ground of such a deed being improbable, as his head had already been spared amidst so many other scenes of blood. The events of the usurper's reign are coolly disposed of in a few prosaic pages; but, adhering to his real, though not avowed plan, Sir James closes this part of his history with a digression, in which he treats of the influence of the aristocracy upon the election of members of the lower house, and shews that such interposition of the grandees was well understood, not at all disguised, and almost universal. Some of the instances which Sir James cites, in proof of the extensive power exercised over the elections, by the magnates of those days, are really curious.

The troubled, though prosperous, reign of Henry VII. occupies about forty pages of this volume; it is distinguished chiefly by the difficulties which the Sovereign had to encounter, in repressing the evils arising out of the inveterate licentiousness, which the wars of the roses had generated. It was for the accomplishment of that purpose, that the court, afterwards rendered the most odious of all tribunals under the title of the star chamber, was constituted. Its original object was the suppression of unlawful combinations which endanger the public quiet, or disturb the ordinary dispensation of the law.' The discretionary powers assumed by the judges of that court soon, however, rendered it a most formidable instrument in the hands of the executive; one, indeed, with which, as its destruction ultimately proved, the constitution could not possibly The discovery, by Cabot, of the coast of Labrador, and the conclusion of the commercial treaty between England and Burgundy, shed upon this reign a much more honourable celebrity. The author's remarks upon this treaty exhibit, in a very favourable view, the faculty which he possesses of seizing upon those epochs in the transactions of men, which mark the completion of great improvements.

"The vast importance of a free and active exchange of all the products of human industry manifestly appears from this treaty, to have become an article in the political belief of some orders in the states, which had been taught the value of traffic by experience. When we now read such national transactions, we feel our approach to those mighty, but then unobserved, changes, which were about to raise the middle classes of men to more influence than they had ever before enjoyed; to restore personal property to that equality with real, of which the feudal institutions had robbed it; in due time to extend political importance to the lowest limits of liberal education; and at length to diffuse that education so widely as to alter the seat of power, and to bring into question many opinions hitherto prevalent amongst statesmen.

That the rise of the pacific and industrious classes should coincide with the discoveries of a new continent and of eastern commerce, can only be thought accidental by shallow observers of human affairs. When we consider the previous discoveries, the coincidence of the voyages of Columbus with that of Gama, and with the conclusion of the treaty now under consideration, it appears evident that the growing wealth of the trading body was the parent of the passion for discovery, and the most important agent in the expeditions against the new world. The attractions of romantic adventure, the impulse of the fancy to explore unknown lands, doubtless, added dignity to such enterprises, and some of the higher classes engaged in them with a portion of the warlike and proselytising spirit of crusaders. But the hope of new produce, and of exchanges more profitable, were the impelling motives of the discovery. The commercial classes were the first movers. The voyages first enriched them, and contributed, in the course of three centuries, to raise them to a power of which no man can now either limit the extent or foretel the remote consequences. As America was discovered by the same spirit which began to render all communities in their structure more popular, it is not singular that she should herself most widen the basis of government, and become the most democratical of states. That vast continent was first settled for her rich commodities. She is now contemplated at a higher stage of her progress,-for her prospects, her men, and her laws, to which the wisest men will not be the most forward to apply the common-place arguments and opinions founded in the ancient systems of Europe.'-pp. 103-104.

The greatest blot upon the character of Henry VII. was his inordinate love of money, which he accumulated to an amount of about £16,000,000 of our money, by the most tyrannical exactions. As a king he was indeed feared, but as a man his memory will always be detested.

The reign of Henry VIII. offers a fruitful field of discussion to the speculative genius of Sir James Mackintosh. His attention is, as was to be expected, principally devoted to the Reformation, the origin and progress of which he details with more than usual minuteness, and with as much impartiality as, perhaps, any freethinker in matters of religion could be supposed capable of. His general reflections upon that memorable event are conceived in the genuine spirit of history :

• The Reformation of 1517, was the first successful example of resistance

VOL. II.

to human authority. The reformers discovered the free use of reason; the principle came forth with the Lutheran revolution, but it was so confused and obscured by prejudice, by habit, by sophistry, by inhuman hatred, and by slavish prostration of mind, to say nothing of the capricious singularities and fantastic conceits which spring up so plentifully in ages of reformation, that its chiefs were long unconscious of the potent spirit which they had set free. It is not yet wholly extricated from the impurities which followed it into the world. Every reformer has erected, all his followers have laboured to support, a little papacy in their own community. The founders of each sect owned, indeed, that they had themselves revolted against the most ancient and universal authorities of the world; but they, happy men! had learnt all truth, they therefore forbad all attempts to enlarge her stores, and drew the line beyond which human reason must no longer be allowed to cast a glance.

'The popish authority claimed by Lutherans and Calvinists was, indeed, more odious and more unreasonable, because more self-contradictory, than that which the ancient church inherited through a long line of ages; inasmuch as the reformers did not pretend to infallibility, perhaps the only advantage, if it were real, which might in some degree compensate for the blessings of an independent mind, and they now punished with death those dissenters who had only followed the examples of the most renowned of protestant reformers, by a rebellion against authority, for the sake of maintaining the paramount sovereignty of reason.

The flagrant inconsistency of all protestant intolerance is a poison in its veins which must destroy it. The clerical despotism was directly applicable only to works on theology; but, as religion is the standard of morality, and politics are only a portion of morality, all great subjects were interdicted, and the human mind, enfeebled and degraded by this interdict, was left with its cramped and palsied faculties to deal with inferior questions, on condition, even then, of keeping out of view every truth capable of being represented as dangerous to any dogma of the established system. The suffering of the Wickliffites, the Vaudois, and the Bohemians, seemed indeed to have fully proved the impossibility of extinguishing opinion by any persecution in which a large body of men can long concur. But the two centuries which followed the preaching of Luther, taught us, by one of the most sanguinary and terrific lessons of human experience, that in the case of assaults on mental liberty, providence has guarded that paramount privilege of intelligent beings, by confining the crimes of mankind, as it has seen fit for a season to allow that their virtues should be circumscribed. Extirpation is the only persecution which can be successful, or even not destructive of its own object. Extirpation is conceivable; but the extirpation of a numerous sect is not the work of a moment. The perseverance of great bodies in such a process, for a sufficient time, and with the necessary fierceness, is happily impracticable. Rulers are mortal: shades of difference in capacity, character, opinion, arise among their successors. Aristocracies themselves, the steadiest adherents to established maxims and revered principles of rule, are exposed to the contagion of the times. Julius aimed at Italian conquest; Leo thought only of art and pleasure: Adrian burned alike with zeal for reforming the clergy and for maintaining the faith. Higher causes are in action for the same purpose. If pity could be utterly rooted out, and conscience struck dumb; if mercy were banished,