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as of this mixed kind, is furnished by the drama of that age. No man would bring unpopular opinions prominently forward in a play intended for representation. And we may safely conclude, that feelings and opinions which pervade the whole dramatic literature of an age, are feelings and opinions of which the men of that age generally partook.

The greatest and most popular dramatists of the Elizabethan age treat religious subjects in a very remarkable manner. They speak respectfully of the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. But they speak neither like Catholics nor like Protestants, but like persons who are wavering between the two systems; or who have made a system for themselves out of parts selected from both. They seem to hold some of the Romish rites and doctrines in high respect. They treat the vow of celibacy, for example, so tempting, and, in after times, so common a subject for ribaldry, with mysterious reverence. The members of religious orders whom they introduce are almost always holy and venerable men. We remember in their plays nothing resembling the coarse ridicule with which the Catholic religion and its ministers were assailed, two generations later, by dramatists who wished to please the multitude. We remember no Friar Dominic, no Father Foigard, among the characters drawn by those great poets. The scene at the close of the Knight of Malta might have been written by a fervent Catholic. Massinger shows a great fondness for ecclesiastics of the Romish church; and has even gone so far as to bring a virtuous and interesting Jesuit on the stage. Ford, in that fine play, which it is painful to read, and scarcely decent to name, assigns a highly creditable part to the Friar. The partiality of Shakspeare for Friars is well known. In Hamlet, the Ghost complains that he died without extreme unction, and, in defiance of the article which condemns the doctrine of purgatory, declares that he is

"Confined to fast in fires,

Til the foul crimes, done in his days of nature,
Are burnt and purged away."

These lines, we suspect, would have raised a tremendous storm in the theatre at any time during the reign of Charles the Second. They were clearly not written by a zealous Protestant, or for zealous Protestants. Yet the author of King John and Henry the Eighth was surely no friend to papal supremacy.

There is, we think, only one solution of the phenomena which we find in the history and in the drama of that age. The religion of England was a mixed religion, like that of the Samaritan settlers, described in the second book of Kings, who "feared the Lord, and served their graven images;" like that of the Judaizing Christians, who blended the ceremonies and doctrines of the synagogue with those of the church; like that of the Mexican Indians, who, for many generations after the subjugation of their race, continued to unite with the rites learned from their conquerors, the worship of the grotesque idols which had been adored by Montezuma and Guatemozin.

These feelings were not confined to the

populace, Elizabeth herself was not exempt from them. A crucifix, with wax-lights burning round it, stood in her private chapel. She always spoke with disgust and anger of the marriage of priests. "I was in horror," says Archbishop Parker, "to hear such words to come from her mild nature and Christian learned conscience, as she spake concerning God's holy ordinance and institution of matrimony." Burghley prevailed on her to connive at the marriages of churchmen. But she would only connive; and the children sprung from such marriages were illegitimate till the accession of James the First.

That which is, as we have said, the great stain on the character of Burghley, is also the great stain on the character of Elizabetn Being herself an Adiaphorist, having no scrople about conforming to the Romish churcn. when conformity was necessary to her own safety, retaining to the last moment of her life a fondness for much of the doctrine and much of the ceremonial of that church, she yet subjected that church to a persecution even more odious than the persecution with which her sister had harassed the Protestants. We say more odious. For Mary had at least the plea of fanaticism. She did nothing for her religion which she was not prepared to suffer for it. She had held it firmly under persecution. She fully believed it to be essential to salvation. If she burned the bodies of her subjects, it was in order to rescue their souls. Eliza beth had no such pretext. In opinion, she was little more than half a Protestant. She had professed, when it suited her, to be wholly a Catholic. There is an excuse, a wretched excuse, for the massacre of Piedmont and the autos-da-fe of Spain. But what can be said in defence of a ruler who is at once indifferent and intolerant ?

If the great queen, whose memory is still held in just veneration by Englishmen, had possessed sufficient virtue and sufficient enlargement of mind to adopt those principles which More, wiser in speculation than in action, had avowed in the preceding generation, and by which the excellent l'Hospital regu lated his conduct in her own time, how dif ferent would be the colour of the whole history of the last two hundred and fifty years! She had the happiest opportunity ever vouchsafed to any sovereign, of establishing perfect freedom of conscience throughout her dominions, without danger to her government, or scandal to any large party among her subjects. The nation, as it was clearly ready to profess either religion, would, beyond all doubt, have been ready to tolerate both. Unhappily for her own glory and for the public peace, she adopted a policy, from the effects of which the empire is still suffering. The yoke of the Established Church was pressed down on the people til they would bear it no longer. Then a reaction came. Another reaction followed. To the tyranny of the establishment succeeded the tumultuous conflict of sects, infuriated by man fold wrongs, and drunk with unwonted freedom. To the conflict of sects succeeded again he cruel domination of one persecuting church

At length oppression put off its most horrible he would have dissolved the Parliament, and form, and took a milder aspect. The penal imprisoned the most popular members He laws against dissenters were abolished. But would have called another Parliament. He exclusions and disabilities still remained. would have given some vague and delusive These exclusions and disabilities, after having promises of relief in return for subsidies. generated the most fearful discontents, after When entreated to fulfil his promises, he having rendered all government in one part would have again dissolved the Parliament, of the kingdom impossible, after having and again imprisoned his leading opponents. brought the state to the very brink of ruin, The country would have become more agi have, in our times, been removed; but, though tated than before. The next House of Comremoved, have left behind them a rankling mons would have been more unmanageable which may last for many years. It is melan- than that which preceded it. The tyrant choly to think with what ease Elizabeth might would have agreed to all that the nation de have united all the conflicting sects under the manded. He would have solemnly ratified an shelter of the same impartial laws and the act abolishing monopolies forever. He would same paternal throne; and thus have placed have received a large supply in return for this the nation in the same situation, as far as the concession; and within half a year new parights of conscience are concerned, in which tents, more oppressive than those which had we at length stand, after all the heart-burnings, been cancelled, would have been issued by the persecutions, the conspiracies, the sedi- scores. Such was the policy which brought tions, the revolutions, the judicial murders, the heir of a long line of kings, in early youth the civil wars, of ten generations. the darling of his countrymen, to a prison and a scaffold.

Elizabeth, before the House of Commons could address her, took out of their mouths the words which they were about to utter in the name of the nation. Her promises went be

close upon her promise. She did not treat the nation as an adverse party; as a party which had an interest opposed to hers; as a party to which she was to grant as few advantages as possible, and from which she was to extort as much money as possible. Her benefits were given, not sold; and when once given, they were not withdrawn. She gave them, too, with a frankness, an effusion of heart, a princely dignity, a motherly tenderness, which enhanced their value. They were received by the sturdy country gentleman, who had come up to Westminster full of resentment, with tears of joy and shouts of God save the Queen. Charles the First gave up half the preroga tives of his crown to the Commons; and the Commons sent him in return the Grand Remonstrance.

This is the dark side of her character. Yet she surely was a great woman. Of all the sovereigns who exercised a power which was seemingly absolute, but which in fact depended for support on the love and confidence of their subjects, she was by far the most illus-yond their desires. Her performance followed trious. It has often been alleged, as an excuse for the misgovernment of her successors, that they only followed her example;-that precedents might be found in the transactions of her reign for persecuting the Puritans, for levying money without the sanction of the House of Commons, for confining men without bringing them to trial, for interfering with the liberty of parliamentary debate. All this may be true. But it is no good plea for her successors, and for this plain reason, that they were her successors. She governed one generation, they governed another; and between the two generations there was almost as little in common as between the people of two different countries. It was not by looking at the particular measures which Elizabeth had adopted, but by looking at the great general principles of her government, that those who followed her were likely to learn the art of managing untractable subjects. If, instead of searching the records of her reign for precedents which might seem to vindicate the mutilation of Prynne and the imprisonment of Eliot, the Stuarts had attempted to discover the fundamental rules which guided her conduct in all her dealings with her people, they would have perceived that their policy was then most unlike to hers when, to a superficial We had intended to say something concerning observer, it would have seemed most to resem- the dexterous Walsingham, the impetuous Ox. ble hers. Firm, haughty, sometimes unjust and ford, the elegant Sackville, the all-accomplishcruel in her proceedings towards individuals ed Sidney; concerning Essex, the ornament of or towards small parties, she avoided with the court and of the camp, the model of chival care, or retracted with speed, every measure ry, the munificent patron of genius, whom great which seemed likely to alienate the great mass virtues, great courage, great talents, the favour of the people. She gained more honour and of his sovereign, the love of his countrymen— inore love by the manner in which she repair- all that seemed to insure a happy and glorious ed her errors, than she would have gained by life, led to an early and an ignominious death. never committing errors. If such a man as concerning Raleigh, the soldier, the sailor, the Charles the First had been in her place when scholar, the courtier, the orator, the poet, the whole nation was crying out against the historian, the philosopher. sometimes reviewmonopolies, he would have refused all redressing the queen's guards sometimes givin⚫

We had intended to say something concerning that illustrious group of which Elizabeth is the central figure-that group which the last of the bards saw in vision from the top of Snowdon, encircling the Virgin Queen—

"Many a baron bold,

And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old
In bearded majesty."

cnase to a Spanish galleon, then answering the chiefs of the country party in the House of Commons, then again murmuring one of his sweet love-songs too near the ears of her highness's maids of honour, and soon after poring over the Talmud, or collating Polybius with Livy. We had intended also to say something concerning the literature of that splendid period, and especially concerning those two incomparable men, the Prince of Poets and the

Prince of Philosophers, who have made the Elizabethan age a more glorious and important era in the history of the human mind, than the age of Pericles, of Augustus, or of Leo. But subjects so vast require a space far larger than we can at present afford. We therefore stop here, fearing that, if we proceed, our arti cle may swell to a bulk exceeding that of all other reviews, as much as Doctor Nares's book exceeds the bulk of all other histories.

DUMONT'S RECOLLECTIONS OF MIRABEAU.*

[EDINBURGH REVIEW, 1832.]

great original thinker, and to a sincere and ardent friend of the human race. If a few weaknesses were mingled with his eminent virtues, if a few errors insinuated themselves among the many valuable truths which he taught, this is assuredly no time for noticing those weaknesses or those errors in an unkind or sarcastic spirit. A great man has gone from among us, full of years, of good works, and of deserved honours. In some of the highest departments in which the human intellect can exert itself, he has not left his equal or his

THIS is a very amusing and a very instructive book; but, even if it were less amusing and less instructive, it would still be interesting as a relic of a wise and virtuous man. M. Dumont was one of those persons, the care or whose fame belongs in an especial manner to mankind, for he was one of those persons who have, for the sake of mankind, neglected the care of their own fame. In his walk through life there was no obtrusiveness, no pushing, no elbowing, none of the little arts which bring forward little men. With every right to the head of the board, he took the low-second behind him. From his contemporaries est room, and well deserved to be greeted with- he has had, according to the usu lot, more or Friend, go up higher. Though no man was less than justice. He has had olind flatterers more capable of achieving for himself a sepa- and blind detractors; flatterers who could see rate and independent renown, he attached him- nothing but perfection in his style, detractors self to others; he laboured to raise their fame; who could see nothing but nonsense in his he was content to receive, as his share of the matter. He will now have judges. Posterity reward, the mere overflowings which redound- will pronounce its calm and impartial decision, ed from the full measure of their glory. Not and that decision will, we firmly believe, place that he was of a servile and idolatrous habit in the same rank with Galiieo and with Locke of mind; not that he was one of the tribe of the man who found jurisprudence a gibberish Boswells, those literary Gibeonites, born to be and left it a science. Never was there a lite hewers of wood and drawers of water to the rary partnership so fortunate as that of Mr higher intellectual castes. Possessed of talents Bentham and M. Dumont. The raw material and acquirements which made him great, he which Mr. Bentham furnished was most prewished only to be useful. In the prime of cious, but it was unmarketable. He was, assumanhood, at the very time of life at which am-redly, at once a great logician and a great bitious men are most ambitious, he was not solicitous to proclaim that he furnished information, arguments, and eloquence to Mirabeau. In his later years he was perfectly willing that his renown should merge in that of Mr. Bentham.

The services which M. Dumont has rendered to society can be fully appreciated only by those who have studied Mr. Bentham's works, both in their rude and in their finished state. The difference both for show and for use is as great as the difference between a lump of golden ore and a rouleau of sovereigns fresh from the mint. Of Mr. Bentham we would at all times speak with the reverence which is due to a

* Souvenirs sur Mirabeau, et sur les deux Premières Assemblées Législatives. Par ETIENNE DUMONT, de Geneve: ouvrage posthume publié par M. J. L. Duval, Membre du Conseil Représentatif du Canton du Genève.

8vo. Paris. 1832.

rhetorician. But the effect of his logic was
injured by a vicious arrangement, and the
effect of his rhetoric by a vicious style. His
mind was vigorous, comprehensive, subtile,
fertile of arguments, fertile of illustrations.
But he spoke in an unknown tongue; and, that
the congregation might be edified, it was neces
sary that some brother having the gift of inter-
pretation should expound the invaluable jargon.
His oracles were of high import, but they were
traced on leaves and flung loose to the wind.
So negligent was he of the arts of selection,
distribution, and compression, that to persons
who formed their judgment of him from his
works in their undigested state, he seemed to
be the least systematic of all philosophers.
The truth is, that his opinions formed a sys
tem which, whether sound or unsound, is more
exact, more entire, and more consistent with
itself than any other. Yet, to superficial rea
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surprised and mortified to learn, that he speaks with very little respect of the French Revolu tion, and of its authors. Some zealous Tories have naturally expressed great satisfaction al finding their doctrines, in some respects, confirmed by the testimony of an unwilling wit ness. The date of the work, we think, explains every thing. If it had been written ten years earlier, or twenty years later, it would have been very different from what it is. It was written, neither during the first excitement of the Revolution, nor at that later period, when the practical good produced by the Revolution had become manifest to the most prejudiced observers; but in those wretched times, when the enthusiasm had abated, and the solid advantages were not yet fully seen. It was written in the year 1799, a year in which the most sanguine friend of liberty might well feel some misgivings as to the effects of what the National Assembly had done. The evils which attend every great change had been severely felt. The benefit was still to come. The price, a

M. Dumont was admirably qualified to supply what was wanting in Mr. Bentham. In the qualities in which the French writers surpass those of all other nations-neatness, clearness, precision, condensation-he surpassed all French writers. If M. Dumont had never been born, Mr. Bentham would still have been a very great man. But he would have been great to himself alone. The fertility of his mind would have resembled the fertility of those vast American wildernesses, in which blossoms and decays a rich but unprofitable vegetation, "wherewith the reaper filleth not his hand, neither he that bindeth up the sheaves his bosom." It would have been with his dis-heavy price, had been paid. The thing pur. coveries as it has been with the "Century of Inventions." His speculations on laws would have been of no more practical use than Lord Worcester's speculations on steam-engines. Some generations hence, perhaps, when legislation has found its Watt, an antiquary might have published to the world the curious fact, that in the reign of George the Third there had been a man called Bentham, who had given hints of many discoveries made since his time, and who had really, for his age, taken a most philosophical view of the principles of jurisprudence.

The

chased had not yet been delivered. Europe was swarming with French exiles. The fleets and armies of the second coalition were victo rious. Within France, the reign of terror was over; but the reign of law had not commenced. There had been, indeed, during three or four years, a written constitution, by which rights were defined, and checks provided. But these rights had been repeatedly violated, and those checks had proved utterly inefficient. laws which had been framed to secure the dis tinct authority of the executive magistrates and of the legislative assemblies-the freedom Many persons have attempted to interpret of election, the freedom of debate, the freedom between this powerful mind and the public. of the press, the personal freedom of citizens But, in our opinion, M. Dumont alone has suc- -were a dead letter. The ordinary mode in ceeded. It is remarkable that, in foreign coun- which the republic was governed, was by tries, where Mr. Bentham's works are known coups d'état. On one occasion, the legislative solely through the medium of the French ver- councils were placed under military restraint sion, his merit is almost universally acknow-by the directors. Then again, directors were ledged. Even those who are most decidedly opposed to his political opinions, the very chiefs of the Holy Alliance, have publicly testified their respect for him. In England, on the contrary, many persons who certainly entertained no prejudice against him on political grounds, were long in the habit of mentioning him contemptuously. Indeed, what was said of Bacon's philosophy may be said of Bentham's. It was of little repute among us till judgments in its favour came from beyond sea, and convinced us, to our shame, that we had been abusing and laughing at one of the greatest men of the age.

M. Dumont might easily have found employments more gratifying to personal vanity, than that of arranging works not his own. But he could have found no employment more useful or more truly honourable. The book before as, hastily written as it is, contains abundant proof, if proof were needed. that he did not become an editor because he wanted the talents which would have made him eminent as a writer.

Persons who hold democratical opinions, and who have been accustomed to consider M. Dumont as one of their party, have been

deposed by the legislative councils. Elections were set aside by the executive authority. Ship loads of writers and speakers were sent, without a legal trial, to die of fever in Guiana. France, in short, was in that state in which re volutions, effected by violence, almost always leave a nation. The habit of obedience had been lost. The spell of proscription had been broken. Those associations on which, far more than on any arguments about property and order, the authority of magistrates rests, had completely passed away. The power of the government consisted merely in the physi. cal force which it could bring to its support. Moral force it had none. It was itself a government sprung from a recent convulsion. Its own fundamental maxim was, that rebellion might be justifiable. Its own existence proved that rebellion might be successful. The people had been accustomed, during several years, to offer resistance to the constituted authorities on the slightest provocation, and to see the con stituted authorities yield to that resistance The whole political world was "without form and void"-an incessant whirl of hostile atoms, which every moment formed some new combination The only man who could fix the

agitated elements of society in a stable form, | perceive where their error lay. We can perwas following a wild vision of glory and em-ceive that the evil was temporary, and the pire through the Syrian deserts. The time was not yet come, when

"Confusion heard his voice, and wild uproar stood ruled;"

when, out of the chaos into which the old society had been resolved, were to rise a new dynasty, a new peerage, a new church, and a new code.

The dying words of Madame Roland, "Oh Liberty! how many crimes are committed in thy name!" were at that time echoed by many of the most upright and benevolent of mankind. M. Guizot has, in one of his admirable pamphlets, happily and justly described M. Lainé as "an honest and liberal man, discouraged by he Revolution." This description, at the time when M. Dumont's Memoirs were written, would have applied to almost every honest and liberal man in Europe; and would, beyond all doubt, have applied to M. Dumont himself. To that fanatic al worship of the all-wise and allgood people, which had been common a few years before, had succeeded an uneasy suspicion that the follies and vices of the people would frustrate all attempts to serve them. The wild and joyous exultation with which the meeting of the States-General and the fall of the Bastile had been hailed, had passed away. In its place was dejection, and a gloomy distrust of specious appearances. The philosophers and philanthropists had reigned. And what had their reign produced? Philosophy had brought with it mummeries as absurd as any which had been practised by the most su perstitious zealot of the darkest age. Philanthropy had brought with it crimes as horrible as the massacre of St. Bartholomew. This was the emancipation of the human mind. These were the fruits of the great victory of reason over prejudice. France had rejected the faith of Pascal and Descartes as a nursery fable, that a courtesan might be her idol, and a madman her priest. She had asserted her freedom against Louis, that she might bow down before Robespierre. For a time men thought, that all the boasted wisdom of the eighteenth century was folly; and that those hopes of great political and social ameliorations, which had been cherished by Voltaire and Cordorcet, were utterly delusive.

good durable. But we cannot be sure, that, if our lot had been cast in their times, we should not, like them, have been discouraged and disgusted; that we should not, like them, have seen, in that great victory of the French people, only insanity and crime.

It is curious to observe how some men are applauded, and others reviled, for merely being what all their neighbours are, for merely going positively down the stream of events, for merely representing the opinions and passions of a whole generation. The friends of popular government ordinarily speak with extreme severity of Mr. Pitt, and with respect and tenderness of Mr. Canning. Yet the whole difference, we suspect, consisted merely in this: that Mr. Pitt died in 1806, and Mr. Canning in 1827. During the years which were common to the public life of both, Mr. Canning was assuredly not a more illiberal statesman than his patron. The truth is, that Mr. Pitt began his political life at the end of the American War, when the nation was suffering from the effects of corruption. He closed it in the midst of the calamities produced by the French Revolution, when the nation was strongly impressed with the horrors of anarchy. changed, undoubtedly. In his youth he had brought in reform bills. In his manhood he brought in gagging bills. But the change, though lamentable, was, in our opinion, perfectly natural, and might have been perfectly honest. He changed with the great body of his countrymen. Mr. Canning, on the other hand, entered into public life when Europe was in dread of the Jacobins. He closed his public life when Europe was suffering under the tyranny of the Holy Alliance. He, too, changed with the nation. As the crimes of the Jacobins had turned the master into something very like a Tory, the events which followed the Congress of Vienna turned the pupil into something very like a Whig.

He

So much are men the creatures of circumstances. We see that, if M. Dumont had died in 1799, he would have died, to use the new cant word, a decided "conservative." If Mr. Pitt had lived to 1832, it is our firm belief that he would have been a decided reformer.

The judgment passed by M. Dumont in this work on the French Revolution must be taken with considerable allowances. It resembles a criticism on a play, of which only the first act has been performed, or on a building from which the scaffolding has not yet been taken down. We have no doubt, that if the excelent author had revised these memoirs thirty years after the time at which they were written, he would have seen reason to omit a few passages, and to add many qualifications and ex

Under the influence of these feelings, M. Dumont has gone so far as to say, that the writings of Mr. Burke on the French Revolution, though disfigured by exaggeration, and though containing doctrines subversive of all public liberty, had been, on the whole, justified by events, and had probably saved Europe from great disasters. That such a man as the friend and fellow-labourer of Mr. Bentham, should have expressed such an opinion, is a circum-planations. stance which well deserves the consideration He would not probably have been incline of uncharitable politicians. These Memoirs to retract the censures, just, though sever have not convinced us that the French Revo- which he has passed on the ignorance, the pre lution was not a great blessing to mankind. sumption, and the pedantry of the National As But they have convinced us that very great sembly. But he would have admitted that, in indulgence is due to those, who, while the Re- spite of those faults, perhaps even by reason volution was actually taking place, regarded it of those faults, that Assembly had conferred with unmixed aversion and horror. We can inestimable benefits on mankind. It is clear

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