In the works of such writers as buildings, public men, and public cerethese, England, at the close of the monies. But of the vast and complex Seven Years' War, is in the highest system of society, of the fine shades of state of prosperity: at the close of the national character, of the practical opeAmerican war she is in a miserable ration of government and laws, he and degraded condition; as if the knows nothing. He who would underpeople were not on the whole as rich, stand these things rightly must not as well governed, and as well educated confine his observations to palaces and at the latter period as at the former. solemn days. He must see ordinary We have read books called Histories of men as they appear in their ordinary England, under the reign of George business and in their ordinary pleathe Second, in which the rise of Me-sures. He must mingle in the crowds thodism is not even mentioned. A of the exchange and the coffee-house. hundred years hence this breed of He must obtain admittance to the conauthors will, we hope, be extinct. If vivial table and the domestic hearth. it should still exist, the late ministerial He must bear with vulgar expressions. interregnum will be described in terms He must not shrink from exploring which will seem to imply that all go-even the retreats of misery. vernment was at an end; that the wishes to understand the condition of social contract was annulled; and that mankind in former ages must proceed the band of every man was against his on the same principle. If he attends neighbour, until the wisdom and virtue only to publie transactions, to wars, of the new cabinet educed order out of congresses, and debates, his studies the chaos of anarchy. We are quite will be as unprofitable as the travels of certain that misconceptions as gross those imperial, royal, and serene soveprevail at this moment respecting many reigns who form their judgment of our important parts of our anuals island from having gone in state to a Tite effect of historical reading is few tine sights, and from having held analogous in many respects, to that formal conferences with a few great produced by foreign travel The stu-officers. He who dent, Dike the tourist, is transported The perfect historian is he in whose prio a new state of society. He sees work the character and spiria of an age He bears new modes is exhibited in miniature. He relates to dwt, he attributes no expression to 2's chameters, which is not authentiested by suficient testimony. But by pažeidus selection, ejection, and ar sagement is such those atcons which have been surped by fecon. 1 bis nurricve a due subermor mar Trow she dies ze many Šnacon & diservai: some SBCJaces and the genesis ze naar omment: Chers June * Jeuses and we browse Bur he seem with deprYSHLIS Nos apie TV * 2 ms s Chen's Triss ir mansted, act geritos pekac erat euches for me The guy of the per sus an em and to mark the progress of the human | throne of the legate, to the chimneymind. Men will not merely be de- corner where the begging friar regaled scribed, but will be made intimately himself. Palmers, minstrels, crusaknown to us. The changes of manners ders,-the stately monastery, with the will be indicated, not merely by a few good cheer in its refectory and the general phrases or a few extracts high-mass in its chapel,-the manorfrom statistical documents, but by house, with its hunting and hawking,-appropriate images presented in every the tournament, with the heralds and line. ladies, the trumpets and the cloth of If a man, such as we are supposing, gold,-would give truth and life to the should write the history of England, representation. We should perceive, he would assuredly not omit the battles, in a thousand slight touches, the imthe sieges, the negotiations, the sedi-portance of the privileged burgher, and tions, the ministerial changes. But the fierce and haughty spirit which with these he would intersperse the swelled under the collar of the dedetails which are the charm of histori-graded villain. The revival of letters cal romances. At Lincoln Cathedral would not merely be described in a few there is a beautiful painted window, magnificent periods. We should diswhich was made by an apprentice out cern, in innumerable particulars, the of the pieces of glass which had been fermentation of mind, the eager appetite rejected by his master. It is so far for knowledge, which distinguished the superior to every other in the church, sixteenth from the fifteenth century. that, according to the tradition, the In the Reformation we should see, not vanquished artist killed himself from merely a schism which changed the mortification. Sir Walter Scott, in the ecclesiastical constitution of England same manner, has used those fragments and the mutual relations of the Euroof truth which historians have scorn-pean powers, but a moral war which fully thrown behind them in a manner raged in every family, which set the which may well excite their envy. He father against the son, and the son has constructed out of their gleanings works which, even considered as histories, are scarcely less valuable than theirs. But a truly great historian would reclaim those materials which the novelist has appropriated. The history of the government, and the history of the people, would be exhibited in that mode in which alone they can be exhibited justly, in inseparable conjunction and intermixture. We should not then have to look for the wars and votes of the Puritans in Clarendon, and for their phraseology in Old Mortality; for one half of King James in Hume, and for the other half in the Fortunes of Nigel. The early part of our imaginary history would be rich with colouring from romance, ballad, and chronicle. We should find ourselves in the company of knights such as those of Froissart, and of pilgrims such as those who rode with Chaucer from the Tabard. Society would be shown from the highest to the lowest,-from the royal cloth of state to the den of the outlaw; from the We against the father, the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother. Henry would be painted with the skill of Tacitus. We should have the change of his character from his profuse and joyous youth to his savage and imperious old age. should perceive the gradual progress of selfish and tyrannical passions in a mind not naturally insensible or ungenerous; and to the last we should detect some remains of that open and noble temper which endeared him to a people whom he oppressed, struggling with the hardness of despotism and the irritability of disease. We should see Elizabeth in all her weakness and in all her strength, surrounded by the handsome favourites whom she never trusted, and the wise old statesmen whom she never dismissed, uniting in herself the most contradictory qualities of both her parents, -the coquetry, the caprice, the petty malice of Anne,-the haughty and resolute spirit of Henry. We have no hesitation in saying that a great artist might K produce a portrait of this remarkable woman at least as striking as that in the novel of Kenilworth, without employing a single trait not authenticated by ample testimony. In the meantime, we should see arts cultivated, wealth accumulated, the conveniences of life improved. We should see the keeps, where nobles, insecure themselves, spread insecurity around them, gradually giving place to the halls of peaceful opulence, to the oriels of Longleat, and the stately pinnacles of Burleigh. We should see towns extended, deserts cultivated, the hamlets of fishermen turned into wealthy havens, the meal of the peasant improved, and his hut more commodiously furnished. We should see those opinions and feelings which produced the great struggle against the house of Stuart slowly growing up in the bosom of private families, before they manifested themselves in parliamentary debates. Then would come the civil war. Those skirmishes on which Clarendon dwells so minutely would be told, as Thucydides would have told them, with perspicuous conciseness. They are merely connecting links. But the great characteristics of the age, the loyal enthusiasm of the brave English gentry, the fierce licentiousness of the swearing, dicing, drunken reprobates, whose excesses disgraced the royal cause, the austerity of the Presbyterian Sabbaths in the city, the extravagance of the independent preachers in the camp, the precise garb, the severe countenance, the petty scruples, the affected accent, the absurd names and phrases which marked the Puritans, the valour, the policy, the public spirit, which lurked beneath these ungraceful disguises,-the dreams of the raving Fifth-monarchy-man, the dreams, scarcely less wild, of the philosophic republican,—all these would enter into the representation, and renderit at once more exact and more striking. The instruction derived from history thus written would be of a vivid and practical character. It would be received by the imagination as well as by the reason. It would be not merely traced on the mind, but branded into it. Many truths, too, would be learned, which can be learned in no other manner. As the history of states is generally written, the greatest and most momentous revolutions seem to come upon them like supernatural inflictions, without warning or cause. But the fact is, that such revolutions are almost always the consequences of moral changes, which have gradually passed on the mass of the community, and which originally proceed far before their progress is indicated by any public measure. An intimate knowledge of the domestic history of nations is therefore absolutely necessary to the prognosis of political events. A narrative, defective in this respect, is as useless as a medical treatise which should pass by all the symptoms attendant on the early stage of a disease and mention only what occurs when the patient is beyond the reach of remedies. A historian, such as we have been attempting to describe, would indeed be an intellectual, prodigy. In his mind, powers scarcely compatible with each other must be tempered into an exquisite harmony. We shall sooner see another Shakspeare or another Homer. The highest excellence to which any single faculty can be brought would be less surprising than such a happy and delicate combination of qualities. Yet the contemplation of imaginary models is not an unpleasant or useless employment of the mind. It cannot indeed produce perfection; but it produces improvement, and nourishes that generous and liberal fastidiousness which is not inconsistent, with the strongest sensibility to merit, and which, while it exalts our conceptions of the art, does not render us unjust to the artist. MILL ON GOVERNMENT. (MARCH 1829.) Essays on Government, Jurisprudence, the Liberty of the Press, Prisons and Prison Discipline, Colonies, the Law of Nations, and Education. By JAMES MILL, Esq. author of the History of British India. Reprinted by permission from the Supplement to the Encyclopædia Britannica. (Not for sale.) London, 1828. Of those philosophers who call themselves Utilitarians, and whom others generally call Benthamites, Mr. Mill is, with the exception of the illustrious founder of the sect, by far the most distinguished. The little work now before us contains a summary of the opinions held by this gentleman and his brethren on several subjects most important to society. All the seven essays of which it consists abound in curious matter. But at present we intend to confine our remarks to the Treatise on Government, which stands first in the volume. On some future occasion, we may perhaps attempt to do justice to the rest. It must be owned that to do justice to any composition of Mr. Mill is not, in the opinion of his admirers, a very easy task. They do not, indeed, place him in the same rank with Mr. Bentham; but the terms in which they extol the disciple, though feeble when compared with the hyperboles of adoration employed by them in speaking of the master, are as strong as any sober man would allow himself to use concerning Locke or Bacon. The essay before us is perhaps the most remarkable of the works to which Mr. Mill owes his fame. By the members of his sect, it is considered as perfect and unanswerable. Every part of it is an article of their faith; and the damnatory clauses, in which their creed abounds far beyond any theological symbol with which we are acquainted, are strong and full against all who reject any portion of what is so irrefragably established. No man, they maintain, who has understanding sufficient to carry him through the first proposition of Euclid, can read this master-piece of demonstration and honestly declare that he remains unconvinced. We have formed a very different opinion of this work. We think that the theory of Mr. Mill rests altogether on false principles, and that even on those false principles he does not reason logically. Nevertheless, we do not think it strange that his speculations should have filled the Utilitarians with admiration. We have been for some time past inclined to suspect that these people, whom some regard as the lights of the world and others as incarnate demons, are in general ordinary men, with narrow understandings and little information. The contempt which they express for elegant literature is evidently the contempt of ignorance. We apprehend that many of them are persons who, having read little or nothing, are delighted to be rescued from the sense of their own inferiority by some teacher who assures them that the studies which they have neglected are of no value, puts five or six phrases into their mouths, lends them an odd number of the Westminster Review, and in a month transforms them into philosophers. Mingled with these smatterers, whose attainments just suffice to elevate them from the insignificance of dunces to the dignity of bores, and to spread dismay among their pious aunts and grandmothers, there are, we well know, many well-meaning men who have really read and thought much; but whose reading and meditation have been almost exclusively confined to one class of subjects; and who, consequently, though they possess much valuable knowledge respecting_those subjects, are by no means so well qualified to judge of a great system as if they had taken a more enlarged view of literature and society. Nothing is more amusing or instructive than to observe the manner in which people who think themselves wiser than all the rest of the world fall into snares which the simple good sense of their neighbours detects and avoids. It is one of the principal tenets of the Utilitarians that sentiment and eloquence serve only to impede the pursuit of truth. They therefore affect a quakerly plainness, or rather a cynical negligence and impurity, of style. The democracy in the quiet and listless po- | vigour of the human mind. It cost pulation of an overgrown empire. The Europe a thousand years of barbarism fear of heresy did what the sense of to escape the fate of China. oppression could not do; it changed men, accustomed to be turned over like sheep from tyrant to tyrant, into devoted partisans and obstinate rebels. The tones of an eloquence which had been silent for ages resounded from the pulpit of Gregory. A spirit which had been extinguished on the plains of Philippi revived in Athanasius and Ambrose. At length the terrible purification was accomplished; and the second civilisation of mankind commenced, under circumstances which afforded a strong security that it would never retrograde and never pause. Europe was now a great federal community. Her numerous states were united by the easy ties of international law and a common religion. Their institutions, their languages, their manners, their tastes in literature, their modes of education, were widely different. Their connection was close enough to allow of mutual observation and improvement, yet not so close as to destroy the idioms of national opinion and feeling. The balance of moral and intellectual influence thus established between the Yet even this remedy was not sufficiently violent for the disease. It did not prevent the empire of Constantinople from relapsing, after a short paroxysm of excitement, into a state of stupefaction, to which history furnishes scarcely any parallel. We there find that a polished society, a society in which a most intricate and elaborate system of jurisprudence was estab-nations of Europe is far more important lished, in which the arts of luxury were well understood, in which the works of the great ancient writers were preserved and studied, existed for nearly a thousand years without making one great discovery in science, or producing one book which is read by any but curious inquirers. There were tumults, too, and controversies, and wars in abundance: and these things, bad as they are in themselves, have generally been favourable to the progress of the intellect. But here they tormented without stimulating. The waters were troubled; but no healing influence descended. The agitations resembled the grinnings and writhings of a galvanised corpse, not the struggles of an athletic man. From this miserable state the Western Empire was saved by the fiercest and most destroying visitation with which God has ever chastened his creatures the invasion of the Northern nations. Such a cure was required for such a distemper. The fire of London, it has been observed, was a blessing. It burned down the city; but it burned out the plague. The same may be said of the tremendous devastation of the Roman dominions. It annihilated the noisome recesses in which lurked the seeds of great moral maladies; it cleared an atmosphere fatal to the health and than the balance of political power. Indeed, we are inclined to think that the latter is valuable principally because it tends to maintain the former. The civilised world has thus been preserved from an uniformity of character fatal to all improvement. Every part of it has been illuminated with light reflected from every other. Competition has produced activity where monopoly would have produced sluggishness. The number of experiments in moral science which the speculator has an opportunity of witnessing has been increased beyond all calculation. Society and human nature, instead of being seen in a single point of view, are presented to him under ten thousand different aspects. By observing the manners of surrounding nations, by studying their literature, by comparing it with that of his own country and of the ancient republics, he is enabled to correct those errors into which the most acute men must fall when they reason from a single species to a genus. He learns to distinguish what is local from what is universal; what is transitory from what is eternal; to discriminate between exceptions and rules; to trace the operation of disturbing causes; to separate those general principles which are always true and everywhere appli |