The author of this history is all English nobleman of large historical acquirements, who has managed to produce two or three valuable works demanding great study and research, without interfering with his duties as a member of Parliament, though, doubtless with some interference with his pleasures as a member of the English aristocracy. The present work is valuable for its accuracy, and interesting from its giving a connected view of the history of England during a period but little known except by the empty abstracts of stupid compilers, or the brilliant but prejudiced letters and memoirs of contemporary writers and statesmen. It comprehends the administrations of Harley and Bolingbroke, of Stanhope, Walpole, Carteret, Newcastle and Chatham, thus including the latter years of the reign of Queen Anne and the reigns of George I. and II. The period covers a wide field of characters and events, and Lord Mahon has been especially successful in unraveling the threads of the foreign policy of England, and indicating the difficulties experienced by her statesmen in sustaining the House of Hanover on the throne. In a narrative point of view the best portions of the history are those relating to the rebellions of 1715 and 1745. It is almost needless to say that Professor Reed has added much to the value and interest of the work by his elucidative notes.
But the richness of Lord Mahon’s materials and the interest of his subject cannot conceal the fact that he lacks both the heart and the brain of an able historian, and that he is essentially a common-place man. The reflections he appends to some of his narratives are commonly such obvious truisms, or such poor apologies for reason, that the reader is made painfully aware of his being in the company of a mediocre gentleman, who, while he always means well, never means much. Lord Mahon is deficient equally in historical science and historical imagination, and his work equally barren of profound principles and vivid pictures. A moderate tory, he holds the hearsays of his creed with a lazy acquiescence, without sufficient passion to be a bigot, and without sufficient logic to be a sophist. When he is tempted into historical parallels, or disquisitions on the changes of parties, as in that passage where he essays to prove that a modern whig is synonymous with a tory of Queen Anne’s day, he adopts the argumentation of Fluellen rather than Chillingworth—shows that “there is a mountain in Wales and a mountain in Macedon,” and leaves the reader to mourn over the misdirection of the human faculties. In his estimate of literature he is still worse. The disquisition on the literature of Queen Anne’s time, in the present history, is a medley of mingled commonplace, which has been worn to rags, and critical nonsense, which has been long exploded. His history, therefore, must be considered simply as a useful narrative of important events, and carefully distinguished from those of Guizot and Thierrey, of Hallam and Macaulay, of Prescott and Bancroft.
Leaves from Margaret Smith’s Journal in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, 1678-9. Boston: Ticknor, Reed & Fields. 1 vol. 16mo.
This beautifully printed volume sustains both the reputation of its publishers for printing handsome books, and its reputed author for writing good ones. It is generally attributed to Whittier, and it certainly displays throughout the shrewdness with which that poet observes, and the facility with which he idealizes events. Here is a volume bringing up to the eye with the vividness of reality the scenes and characters of a past age, and making us as familiar with them as if we had ridden by the side of Margaret in her journey from Boston to Newbury, and yet through the whole book runs a vein of pure poetry, lending a consecrating light to scenes which might possess but little interest if actually observed. The quaint spelling undoubtedly adds to the illusion of its antiquity, but what makes it really seem old is its primitive sentiment and bold delineations. Margaret herself is a most bewitching piece of saintliness, with the sweetness and purity of one of Jeremy Taylor’s sermons, and as full of genial humanity as of beautiful devotion. Placed as she is amid the collision of opposite fanaticisms, the austere fanaticism of the Puritan and the vehement fanaticism of the Quaker, she shines both by her own virtues and by contrast with the harsh qualities by which she is surrounded. The book provokes a comparison with the Diary of Lady Willoughby, and that comparison it will more than stand, being superior to that charming volume in the range of its persons and events, and equal to it in the conception of the leading character. The author has shown especial art in modifying every thing, by the supposed medium of mind through which it passes—the heroine telling the whole story in her own words—and at the same time preserving every thing in its essential life. This is a difficult and delicate process of representation, but Whittier has performed it.
Democracy in France. By Monsieur Guizot, Late Prime Minister. New York: D. Appleton & Co.
This little volume is well worthy the reputation of one of the greatest historians, philosophers and statesmen at the age—in other words, of the reputation of Guizot. It is marked by preeminent ability in statement, analysis, argumentation and composition, and we doubt not will exert some considerable influence on the politics of France. In his preface the author avers that nothing in the volume bears the impress of his personal situation, and he adds, “While events of such magnitude are passing before his eyes, a man who did not forget himself would deserve to be forever forgotten.” The book justifies the author’s assertion. It is simply an examination of things without regard to persons, and is as philosophic in its tone as in its method. The chapters on The Social Republic and The Elements of Society are masterpieces of analysis and statement, and well deserve the attentive study of all who think or prattle on social science. It seems to us that the present volume is sufficient to convince all candid minds, that whatever may be the faults and errors of Guizot as a statesman, he has no equal among the men at present dominant in France. Since his fall that country has been governed, or misgoverned, by soldiers and sentimentalists, with a pistol in one hand and the Rights of Man in the other, and is a standing monument of the madness of trusting the state to men of “second rate ability and first rate incapacity.” The Red Republicans have principles; M. Guizot has principles; the legitimists have principles; but the present dynasty has the peculiar character of being, in an intellectual sense, the most thoroughly unprincipled government that French ingenuity could have formed.
Oregon and California. By J. Quinn Thornton. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1849.