revealed truths, the Platonism which they had learned either from the original sources or through the muddy channels of Philo's learning' (a very questionable statement), 'though Justin and Clement recognized an evangelical preparation in Greek philosophy no less than in Jewish theosophy, and though even Augustine declared that Socrates was the philosopher of the Catholic faith, modern fanatics are permitted to insult with the name of Neo-Platonist those cultivated theologians,' (e. g. Dr. Donaldson himself?) who in our days teach the pure doctrines of a spiritual religion, and refuse to bear the yoke of a Semitic and Pharisaic sacerdotalism which was formally discarded when the good tidings of salvation were proclaimed to the universal family of mankind.' Bona verba, Dr. Donaldson! We forbear to quote similar observations, too often of a flippant nature, which are introduced not very sparingly into Dr. Donaldson's work. We cannot, however, quit the subject without asking that gentleman, who by his own confession believes in neither angel nor spirit, how the belief in a celestial hierarchy necessarily flows from the acceptance of a dualistic hypothesis, as he informs us in vol. iii., pp. 205, 206? In the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries we find a temporary revival of literature, a flash in the socket of the dying light. Nonnus, Coluthus, Quintus Smyrnæus, and others more or less successfully imitated the ancient epos. Their productions may be compared to the Gothic architecture of the early half of the seventeenth century, of which it is hard to say how much is to be assigned to a tradition, and how much to a renaissance. One of the most curious features of the literature of this age, is the growth of prose romances, chiefly pastoral poems without metre, and almost exclusively of an erotic tendency. Dr. Donaldson has made short work of the long story of Byzantine literature, and so shall we. The thousand years during which it existed is not more wonderful than the strange longevity of the fabric under the shadow of which it flourished. We doubt whether it is possible to fix its termination at any precise point. We believe that it will be found that there is a catena of Greek writers, of whatever value, lasting from the fall of Constantinople to the declaration of Greek independence. EARL OF DUNDONALD.* ON has bitter his eighty-fourth birthday Lord Dundonald has given to disappointments of his own memorable_career. The famous Lord Cochrane of the great naval war, the terror and then the idol of the Spanish coast, the hero of Basque Roads, and the founder of the liberties of Chili and Brazil, has attained, in the evening of his eventful life, to tranquillity after many sufferings, and to honour after unmerited and heartbreaking disgrace. After proving his fitness for command by a series of marvellous exploits, he was driven from his country's service and stripped of the honours he had gloriously won. He was convicted on a shameful charge and condemned to an ignominious punishment. Expelled from the Navy and from the House of Commons, he carried his consummate skill in warfare to aid the South Americans in their struggle for independence against their masters of the Old World. The most complete successes gained by the smallest means were cheated of all reward by the ungrateful chicanery of the governments which owed their existence to the terror of his name. After creating a navy and teaching it to win victories; after sweeping the Spanish flag from the Pacific coast of South America, he quitted the Republic of Chili, disgusted by its ingratitude and dishonesty, and entered the service of the newly-elected Emperor of Brazil, for whom he achieved triumphs equally astonishing, and who suffered him to be robbed of his hardly-earned emoluments by the same despicable artifices. The grandeur of the language and the baseness of the acts of these governments present human nature under one of its most repulsive aspects. They had the cunning to perceive in Lord Cochrane's great abilities and impetuous character an instrument of unequalled power which they might use and afterwards fling aside. He returned to England with a reputation for almost superhuman skill and daring, and bringing with him a few ribbons and stars, and many bundles of papers in support of claims which in after years he urged to very little *1. The Autobiography of a Seaman. By Thomas, tenth Earl of Dundonald, G.C.B., Admiral of the Red, Rear-Admiral of the Fleet, &c. &c. Vol. i. London. Bentley. 1860. 2. Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chili, Peru, and Brazil, from Spanish and Portuguese Domination. By Thomas, Earl of Dundonald, &c. &c. In 2 vols. London. Ridgway. 1859. VOL. II. 2 Q purpose upon the nations who owed to him that their political existence was not quenched in its feeble infancy. The autobiography of Lord Dundonald contains many mournful passages; nor is it a book which should be placed in the hands of youth to inculcate the belief that a diligent use of the abilities which God has given, is sure to win from a grateful country a substantial recompense of wealth and honour. Here was a man of brilliant genius, of determined industry, and of heroic courage, thwarted in all his plans, hated by officials, hampered by imbecile commanders, condemned to pine in inactivity when he was capable of leading fleets and armies to assured victory, persecuted by political hostility, and finally convicted on a false charge and thrown into prison at the very moment that the ship lay ready for sea in which his country hoped to see him do to the United States as he had done to Spain and France. To think that a career so glorious should be blasted at its moment of highest promise by a conviction for a stock-jobbing conspiracy; to see a man of rare capacity for war compelled first by the jealousy of his superiors, and afterwards by the long continuance of European peace, to feel that his life was ebbing away without finding adequate employment for the powers which he knew himself to possessthe contemplation of such a history is not unfruitful of useful lessons; but it is by no means calculated, like that of Nelson, to inspire youthful minds with the firm belief that the zealous discharge of duty cannot fail of its appropriate reward. The Earl of Dundonald is the tenth who has borne the title; and with a Scotchman's love for ancestral lore he is careful to inform us of the deeds and sufferings of the Cochranes of Renfrewshire, in the turbulent reigns of the Scottish kings. One of the most remarkable of his progenitors was Robert Cochrane, created Earl of Mar, who won the favour of King James III. by fighting a duel in the royal presence, and kept it by his skill in architecture, and thus raised himself to be one of the chief ministers of that monarch. Afterwards becoming obnoxious to the lawless nobles he was seized by them and hanged in the midst of the feudal array of the whole kingdom assembled round the royal standard. It was in the church at Lauder, that Archibald Bell the Cat gained his homely surname by undertaking to be the first to begin hostile measures against this formidable favourite of the sovereign. It is remarkable that in personal courage, in inventive skill, and in unpopularity with the wealthy and the powerful, we have in Robert Cochrane some of the same features which so strongly mark the character of his descendant. The turn for mechanical contrivance and for researches in natural science appears to have been hereditary in this talented but unprosperous house. The ninth Earl of Dundonald -the father of the subject of this article-left nothing to his son beyond the naked dignity of a peerage, having dissipated every shilling of his property in costly experiments, and still more costly speculations by which he hoped to reap the benefit of discoveries which brought to him, however, only barren or bankrupt honour, while more dexterous adventurers contrived to appropriate all the profit. And as with the father, so also with the son. By the light of his own bold invention, he showed the way to destroy, as it lay at anchor, a French fleet which was the terror of the British colonies. Men of inferior abilities, but more skilful in dealing with the world, first marred his design by their stupidity and then usurped the larger share of credit for that measure of success which they had not been able by their blundering incapacity to prevent. And, again, when, with the aid of some three hundred British and American seamen, Lord Dundonald had contrived to destroy the Spanish navy in the Pacific, the political chiefs of Chili and Peru took the full advantage of all the efforts and all the sacrifices which he had obtained from his devoted followers, and then stripped him of every means of redeeming the promises he had made to the men who under his command had performed almost incredible exploits. It cannot fail to strike the reader that Lord Dundonald has shown all the fertility of warlike genius which marked his renowned countryman the conqueror of Scinde, and also an intractability of character which, both in its features and its results, recalls painfully the history of the short but splendid services and the long obscurity, the ardent energy, the disappointments, and the embittered life of Sir Charles Napier. It was the misfortune of both these distinguished men to reach the prime of their capacity for war at the commencement of a long peace. Nor does the parallel between these two victims of official prejudice and routine stop here. After playing a_distinguished part at the battle of Corunna, and losing in Sir John Moore a patron who knew and could have given a fair field to his abilities, it was the cruel fate of Sir Charles Napier to be employed during almost all the rest of the Peninsular war in drilling soldiers at Bermuda. And at the time when the United States were profiting by the corruption and mismanagement of the British navy, and by their own innovations upon the practice of maritime warfare, Lord Cochrane, the most earnest reformer of abuses, and the most enterprising and original of commanders, was driven from parliament and from the navy, and locked up in the King's Bench prison by a judgment founded on a mistaken verdict, passed by a bench of adverse judges, and welcomed with delight by the infernal malice of a faction which he had provoked by his unsparing denunciation of administrative frauds so monstrous that now one can hardly understand how even Nelson and his compeers managed, under such paralyzing influences, we do not say to lead fleets to victory, but to save them from being swept from off the seas. It is unnecessary to state that in politics Lord Cochrane was a Radical, and in the days when he sat with Sir Francis Burdett for Westminster, there were many good people who believed that any Radical, no matter what his character or position or reputation, was quite capable, if he saw an opportunity, of conspiring to rig the stock-market, or of perpetrating any other sort of villainy. On the other hand there were a few men, afterwards illustrious in various ways, who felt, by the force of their own sympathy with a generous mind, that, in spite of strong apparent proof of guilt, Lord Cochrane had a nature which could not have stooped to baseness of the kind imputed to him or of any other. Was it likely that one who spoiled his own professional prospects by speaking truths unwelcome to Boards of Admiralty should so far degrade himself as to propagate false intelligence in order to profit by the rise of stock? After what Lord Cochrane called the failure, and the Government the victory of Basque Roads, the First Lord of the Admiralty offered to send him with a frigate squadron and uncontrolled discretion to the Mediterranean, if he would desist from opposing in Parliament the vote of thanks to Lord Gambier, the admiral who had marred his plans. Here was a proposal, we will not say of a conspiracy, but of a little quiet bartering of parliamentary independence for opportunities of professional distinction which many men in Lord Cochrane's place would have seized upon and made the instrument of raising themselves to the highest honours of the naval service. But the firm, the stern, we may almost say the impracticable public virtue of Lord Cochrane scorned a proffer which his own sense of his great capacity must have made most tempting. And this was the man who could league himself with villains for the sake of pocketing a few thousand pounds! In the long and honourable careers upon which Lord Lansdowne and Lord Brougham now look back, it must be one of the most pleasing incidents, that when the clamour of enraged faction pronounced Lord Cochrane guilty, they from the first boldly maintained his innocence. And of the electors of Westminster of half a century ago, the few that now survive may with pride remember that, in the words |